The geosynclinal theory is one of the great unifying principles in geology.
In many ways its role in geology is similar to that of the theory of evolution, which
serves to integrate the many branches of the biological sciences....
Just as the doctrine of evolution is universally accepted among biologists, so also
the geosynclinal origin of the major mountain systems is an established principle
in geology.Clark and Stearn, in a geology textbook, shortly before the geosynclincal theory
was overturned in favor of plate tectonics. Cited by William Dembski in
The Design Revolution (IVP, 2004), p. 207.

How Well Do We Know Our Moon? 03/31/2005
Leonard David wrote in
Space.Com
that Earths moon is still a puzzle 
luna incognita, he calls it, hoping for a new corps of discovery to
go back. Surprisingly, the treasure trove of Apollo data has
been sitting around and never properly studied, especially since
the development of more highly sophisticated analytical techniques. Carl Pieters
(Brown U) has listed some of his questions:

Has the enormous lunar south pole Aitken Basin on the Moons farside excavated into the lunar mantle?
What happened in the first few hundred million years to cause the lunar nearside to be so very different from the farside?
What caused the pockets of iron-rich materials in the primitive crust?
What are the deposits near the lunar poles and what other possible resources have we missed?

Even the origin of the moon is an open question, despite the current consensus of the impact
model. The article gives space to one maverick who doesnt believe it:
Paul Lowman, a planetary geologist at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
A lot had to happen very fast. I have trouble grasping that, he said.
You have to do too much geologically in such a short time after the Earth and the
Moon formed. Frankly, I think the origin of the Moon is still an unsolved problem,
contrary to what anybody will tell you, the article quotes Lowman.
The moon is becoming a popular target again. The European Space Agency
is already there with SMART-1. Missions from Japan, China, India and the United States are
planning to fill in the many gaps in our understanding of our nearest celestial neighbor.

We do science a disfavor when we think we know the
answers or let a consensus lull us into complacency. Question the textbooks;
dig through the treasure trove of data, and be willing to think independently.
Next headline on:Solar System 
Geology

OK, Darwin Party: checkmate. Natural selection
cannot act without accurate replication, yet the protein machinery for the level of
accuracy required is itself built by the very genetic code it is designed to protect.
Explain that! If the Darwinists cannot provide a plausible mechanism whereby nonliving
chemicals, by chance, hit upon a means of replicating information-bearing molecules
accurately, there would have been no evolution, because any gains would have been
drowned in the errors of subsequent generations.
It would have been challenging enough
to explain accurate translation alone in a primordial soup, but now throw in some free radicals and
radiation, and any information gained would have quickly been destroyed
through accumulation of errors. So accurate replication and proofreading
are required for the origin of life. How on earth could proofreading
enzymes emerge, especially with this degree of fidelity, when they depend on
the very information that they are designed to protect? Think about it. This is a
catch-22 for Darwinists. No wonder none of the authors of these two articles dared whisper the
word evolution. The gig is up; we might as well not even waste any time
arguing about Hobbit man (03/25/2005),
peppered mice (04/18/2003) and
what IMAX films to show
(03/23/2005).
Proofreading codes by chance? And a complex suite of translation machinery
without a designer?
Anyone with a head screwed on is not going to want such nonsense taught in public
schools (03/24/2005).
If we can just sweep away the cobwebs of musty Darwinian thinking out
of our minds for a moment, we can begin to enjoy the wonder of these incredible
mechanisms. If the ancients could understand that creation demands a Creator
by looking at the sun, or a bird, or a baby, how much more we today with all the
revelations about cell biology and molecular machines? The grand oratorio of
creation is being unveiled, a little at a time, into a hallelujah chorus
that deserves our most worshipful applause  indeed, a standing ovation.
Next headline on:Cell Biology  Genetics and DNA 
Amazing Stories

The media continue to slant this controversy according
to the alt-ctrl-Scopes macro, Rob Crowther of EvolutionNews writes. But no one can
deny that the debate is getting more and more attention. Sooner or later, the
Darwinists, instead of just assuming their belief that humans had bacteria ancestors,
will have to actually come up with some evidence for it.
Next headline on:Intelligent Design  Darwinism
 Media  Education

Apparently Mr. Bloch had not heard that some mammals
had dinosaurs for breakfast (see 01/12/2005 entry).
He seems a staunch believer in the if you build it, they will come theory
of evolution (see 01/28/2005 commentary), yet
doesnt seem alarmed that yet another plank in the evolutionary platform has
just been removed. Crazy is in the eye of the beholder.
Next headline on:Mammals 
Evolution 
Dumb Stories

Bee aware: among all their expressions of amazement about the
capabilities built into such a tiny insect, the authors made no mention of
evolution in their paper. That may sting the Darwinists but create a real
buzz elsewhere, honey.
Next headline on:Terrestrial Zoology: Insects, etc. 
Amazing Stories

The scientists noticed that the overlapping region of the two colliding galaxies is
very rich in molecular hydrogen, which is in an excited state.
In particular, the radiation from molecular hydrogen is evenly strong
in the northern and southern areas of the overlap region. Much to the teams
surprise, however, there are too few supernova explosions or regions of intense
star formation there to explain the observed molecular hydrogen emission.
So, the excitation of the molecular hydrogen must be the signature of
that observationally rare pre-star birth phase in which hydrogen is excited
by the mechanical energy produced in the collision and transported by shock waves.
In other words, these results provide the first direct evidence of the missing link
between gas collision and the birth of the first stars. The team
estimates that when the gas will collapse to form new stars, during the next
million years, the Antennae galaxy will become at least two times brighter
in the infrared.
(Emphasis added in all quotes.)

The observations were made with ESAs ISO infrared observatory. Although
scientists have assumed that colliding galaxies produce shock waves that lead to
rapid star formation, So far, however, there was no clear picture of what
happens in the time between the collision of two galaxies and the birth of the
first new stars. The observation of molecular hydrogen in an excited state is
said to the be signature of this stage.

Excuse me, but are you not assuming what you need
to prove? You said that direct observations of star birth by gas compression
are lacking, then assume that gas compression is producing star birth.
Thats called begging the question.
The point of this commentary is not to dispute whether star formation
occurs by gas compression caused by shock waves. It is to encourage good science.
This press release did a mighty sloppy job of making its case.
Assume for a
moment you are an unbiased, neutral observer listening to an astronomer prove that
when hydrogen is compressed by galaxy collisions and supernova explosions, it collapses
into compact burning objects called stars. From your personal experience, you might be tempted
to assume that excited gas does no such thing. Yet Professor Zubenelgenubi insists
it happens, so you, unbiased observer that you are, are eager to hear his proof.
He first claims that the observations are scanty, but we see infrared radiation from
areas where star birth is occurring. Are you convinced yet? He continues:

The astronomers believe that star formation induced by shocks may have
played a role in the evolution of proto-galaxies in the first thousand
million years of life of our Universe. Shock waves produced through
the collision of proto-galaxies may have triggered the condensation process
and speeded-up the birth of the very first stars. These
objects, made up of only hydrogen and helium, would otherwise have taken
much longer to form, since light elements such as hydrogen and helium take a
long time to cool down and condense into a proto-star. Shock waves from
the first cloud collisions may have been the helping hand.

Your next response to him might be that this makes a nice
story, but you were expecting proof that stars form by compression of shocked gas
and he seems to be just assuming they do. Silently you wonder if the Professor
has actually been observing anything for a billion years, but uninitiated frosh
that you are, you meekly point out that it would seem that
shocked gas would dissipate, not compress into compact, dense, shining objects.
He then points to his Exhibit A: Ah, he patronizes, but now vee have
zee proof! Vee have zee missing link! [drum roll] excited molecular
hydrogen! [cymbal crash].
Biological evolutionists are often guilty of assuming evolution to
prove evolution. Every data point is inserted into a pre-existing mental picture
of the very thing they need to demonstrate. Here we see it happening with
astronomers, too. The story is the thing: the big sweeping panorama of
big-bang-to-earth evolution is merely assumed, and every little ounce of observation is
fit into the story, whether the observation justifies it or not. As for proto-galaxies,
the science we read shows that the very oldest galaxies were already mature
(see 03/10/2005,
08/27/2004 and
07/08/2004 entries), so where are the missing
links for this cosmological Cambrian explosion? The story of star formation itself
is not without problems (see 03/31/2004 entry)  so much so, that
Simon White remarked, The simple recipes in published models do not reproduce
the star formation we see. Theorists are now having to grow up.
This ESA press release seems appropriate only for those in kindergarten.
Maybe shocked hydrogen forms stars, and maybe it doesnt, but any
unbiased truth seeker would surely demand more evidence than this. Where else would
such a physical process occur? We can observe compressed gas and shock waves in
the solar system, such as the bow shock at Jupiters magnetic field boundary. There,
the compressed gas just flows around the outsides and doesnt form compact, dense
objects. In this case, gravity is too small to be a factor, so the comparison
may be moot; thats beside the point. Read this press release without assuming
stellar evolution is true and you would be hard pressed to find a solid reason to
find the case convincing. Dont ever
get swept into the emotional euphoria of any scientists bluff.
Is it not ironic that the only ones obeying
the bumper sticker, Question authority, are the creationists?
Next headline on:Stars and Deep Space Astronomy

Descendants Can Overcome Parental Mutations 03/28/2005
Bad genes from both parents may not spell doom in all cases.
Scientists at Purdue
University found that if two parents have bad mutations, the child can sometimes
reconstruct the correct gene from the grandparents. Our genetic training tells us
thats just not possible, said Bob Pruitt, co-researcher on the team that ran the experiment repeatedly
with the lab plant Arabidopsis. This challenges everything we believe.
Some unknown mechanism, perhaps using RNA, is storing a template of the correct sequence that the offspring
can use to reconstruct the gene, they suspect. This supplements ordinary Mendelian
inheritance with a means of correcting errors.2 About 10% of their experimental
offspring were able to inherit the correct gene from the grandparents. Their
work was published in Nature last week.1 See also
News@Nature
that says this report flabbergasts scientists and
overturns textbook genetics. The summary on
Science Now
describes this as an inheritable cache of RNA that can reverse evolution,
undoing mutations and restoring a gene to its former glory (emphasis added).
One of the researchers said this experiment suggests the existence of a unique
genetic memory system that can be invoked at will to reverse harmful mutations.
It would seem that the memory would require procedures for comparing the bad gene with the
template, excising the bad gene, and inserting the correct one. Whatever this
mechanism is, it has been under the radar, says
New
Scientist, and could exist in animals and even in humans.
1Lolle et al., Genome-wide non-mendelian inheritance of
extra-genomic information in Arabidopsis,
Nature
434, 505 - 509 (24 March 2005); doi:10.1038/nature03380.2Mendel had it mostly right (see online biography);
this new mechanism adds to our knowledge of inheritance.

Trouble in the Darwin Party camp. They were counting
on those lucky mutations producing all the glory, not mechanisms to undo mutations
to restore a gene to its former glory. This is stasis with a vengeance.
We already knew that many genetic errors
are corrected in the nucleus or the cell before reproduction occurs; now, another
mechanism has come to light that corrects errors after they have left the station, almost
like warranty repair service.
So tell us please, Darwinians: what lucky
mutation led to a system that can correct mutations? Neo-Darwinism wont
get far if its main source of variation  mutations  is kept in check
with genetic homeland security.
Reverse evolution is not evolution at all; its creation. It implies there was
a creation that was so elegant, it contained even a repair warranty: a mechanism to identify
when something has gone wrong, and automatically deploy resources to fix it so that the
organism could restore its former glory.
Next headline on:Genetics  Evolution

Easter Essay 03/27/2005
Accompanied by a picture of a cross and a sunset, captioned The Sun and the Son,
a somber-looking Brian Walden wrote an essay in the
BBC News expressing
his reaction to Astronomer Royal Sir Martin Rees chilling comment
that It will not be humans who witness the demise of the Sun six billion years hence;
it will be entities as different from us as we are from bacteria. Rees
stated that the idea of evolution is well-known, but that the vast potential for
further evolution isnt yet part of our common culture.
Walden
delved into the implications of this assumed scientific view of our future
for morality, ethics, and religion with a note of
nostalgia for his simple childhood faith: This is Easter and I cant help
contrasting the Christian promise of my youth with what science expects to happen.

This essay had better make every
Christian pastor and believer wake up and ponder the deadly effect of
evolutionary thinking. Mr. Walden is caught in a tension between
what his conscience says and what the Darwin Party soothsayers are telling him.
He sees the enormous complexity of an unborn baby revealed by the latest sonograms,
and he fears the future of bioethics with no foundation for ethics, but he accepts
at face value what Rees says about evolution and the future of the sun billions of
years from now. Like a dumb sheep, he fails to question
the glittering generalities pronounced
by the Babbleonians on the left, the liberals who drove the wedge between science
and religion as far back as the 18th century. While realizing that any kind of
consensus between the Christians and the liberals would be an alloy of iron and
clay, he yet hungers for some kind of dialogue between them at least.
This is pathetic. Walden is badly uninformed, because he grants to secular science
an authority and credibility it doesnt have. If he would stop naively
trusting what scientific sleuthsayers like Rees say the sun is going to do in six
billion years, he could begin to regain some confidence in the Son who said, He who
believes in Me has everlasting life. Somebody give Walden a rope to climb out of the dark
cave of (misnamed) Enlightenment thinking. Maybe a copy of
The Privileged Planet would
help, and a bookmark to Creation-Evolution Headlines.
England made a mistake by welding the church to the government.
Enlightenment liberals rightly despised the corruption that resulted, but went too
far in asserting autonomy in matters of science and ethics. Its time for
England to get rid of its useless state church, and experience a revival
from the ground up: from individual believers no longer intimidated by
the wormtongues of liberal philosophers (who know neither the past nor future
of our sun). Its time for them to understand the strength of the Biblical
foundation for science and morality. Armed with new confidence in the unchanging
Word of God and its ability to stimulate true science as well as provide solid ground
for ethics, individuals must overthrow the Darwinian usurpers
before their vile ethics bear any more poisoned fruit.
Suns and babies do not come from nothing. Like everything in nature,
they have the fingerprint of design: not just impersonal design, but the design of an
all-wise, all-powerful, personal Creator. Waldens predicament
comes from having his authorities inverted. The sun is subservient to the Son,
not the other way around.
There may be nothing new under the sun, but if the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed
(John 8:36).
Next headline on:Evolution  The Bible

Elephants: The BBC News summarized
a report from Nature1 about an elephant in Kenya named Mlaika that
could make convincing truck sounds. The elephant lived near a road
and apparently learned how to do impressions. This is the only other case of a terrestrial
mammal able to imitate external sounds besides primates (particularly humans).
See also National
Geographic News and News@Nature.

Octopi: MSNBC News
reported a study in Science2 that observed two species of octopus able to walk on
two feet  er, tentacles. The behavior is apparently a disguise to fool
sharks into thinking it is just a piece of seaweed drifting by. The octopus uses two
tentacles to walk in a stepwise fashion, and the
other six to imitate the shape of algae or a coconut shell. This behavior
must be hard-wired into the octopus brain. See also
News@Nature.

Bats: Science
News summarized a report in the March 17 Nature about a species of vampire
bat that can not only fly, but run (see also MSNBC
News). On a treadmill, they demonstrated an ability to trot by leaps and bounds.
The researchers thought this species must have re-evolved the ability to run, for some
reason. One scientist was impressed at the versatility of muscle-tendon system
that give these bats the ability to both run and fly;
he told Science News, Few human-made machines can act like springs, motors, and brakes.

Playful Animals: Finally, there was a recent book review about the evolution of
play in animals. Bernd Heinrich, evaluating The Genesis of Animal Play: Testing the Limits
by Gordon M. Burkhardt (MIT, 2005) in Nature,3 commented that despite the
valiant effort in the book, Working out why animals play is no easy task. 

A kitten batting a ball of yarn, kids on a swing, or an adult wielding a fishing-rod 
few would disagree that these behaviours can be described as play. Yet in the study of
animal behaviour, the phenomenon of play is an anomaly. It is said to be
adaptive and yet it involves the expenditure of much energy, often with no apparent pay-off.
When a certain behaviour is found to have obvious pay-offs or functions it is, almost by
definition, no longer play but is defined by its function, such as foraging, predator avoidance or mating.
(Emphasis added in all quotes.)

We know so little about play, he confessed, despite centuries of attempts to define it
and fathom its functions. It seems like senseless behavior in a world of survival, yet
it is a genuine behavioural phenomenon.
In the end, he couldnt decide whether animals (and humans) play for some unknown
evolutionary fitness value, or just for fun.

A game that is fun to play is to challenge Darwinists
with an amazing capability of an animal and watch them try to explain it.
Then, while they tie themselves in knots, we can go play frisbee with the dog, tease
the cat with a ball of string, or teach the parakeet to say Charlie is gnarly.
Wonder where we can get a recording of that elephant imitating a truck.Next headline on:Mammals 
Marine Life 
Amazing Stories

Whether preservation is strictly morphological and the result of some kind of
unknown geochemical replacement process or whether it extends to the subcellular
and molecular levels is uncertain. However, we have identified protein
fragments in extracted bone samples, some of which retain slight antigenicity.
These data indicate that exceptional morphological preservation in some
dinosaurian specimens may extend to the cellular level or beyond. (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

Erik Stokstad in the same issue of Science2 says that the vessels, still flexible and elastic,
are not fossilized. The announcement of intact cells is leading some
scientists to think they may be able to extract DNA from them (although recreating Jurassic
Park is out of the question). Principal investigator Schweitzer said she was shocked at the find.
She didnt believe it till they repeated the extraction process 17 times.
As a control, they repeated the same
process on extant ostrich bones and recovered soft tissues that were virtually
indistinguishable from those of the dinosaur.
It is not yet clear
whether the original molecules in the tissues and cells were preserved or were replaced by
other compounds. Earlier claims of original tissue in other kinds of multi-million-year
fossilized organisms turned out to show replacement. Schweitzer told the BBC, however,
that It still has places where there are no secondary minerals, and its
not any more dense than modern bone; its bone more than anything.
As to DNA, Stokstad quotes one expert who said, the likelihood is
probably next to none that intact DNA could have survived for 68 million years,
even if the bone was protected in stable, dry, subzero conditions all that time.
The BBC reporter agrees that the life molecule degrades rapidly over
thousand-year timescales, and the chances of a sample surviving from the Cretaceous
are not considered seriously.
Schweizer is seeking funds to do mass spectrometry on the tissues and find out.
1Schweitzer et al., Soft-Tissue Vessels and Cellular Preservation in Tyrannosaurus rex,
Science,
Science, Vol 307, Issue 5717, 1952-1955, 25 March 2005, [DOI: 10.1126/science.1108397].2Erik Stokstad, Tyrannosaurus rex Soft Tissue Raises Tantalizing Prospects,
Science
Vol 307, Issue 5717, 1852, 25 March 2005, [DOI: 10.1126/science.307.5717.1852b].

This appears to falsify, in one dramatic swoop, the claim that dinosaurs
died out 65 million years ago. Why dont the
scientists admit it? Its uncanny how all the reports treat the 70 million
figure like an unquestionable fact, despite the clear implications of this discovery.
Notice how the BBC treats the date like dogma:

In the hotly contested field of dino research, the work will be greeted with
acclaim and disbelief in equal measure.
What seems certain is that some fairly remarkable conditions
must have existed at the Montana site where the T. rex died,
68 million years ago.

Seems certain to whom? Not to people with their heads screwed on, who have
refused to take the oath of loyalty to the Darwin Party, or signed on to the Committee to Protect
the Geologic Column at All Costs. Well have to see if the NCSE censors
this paper, preventing teachers from showing it to their students, to protect their
sensitive minds from anxiety when they compare it with their textbooks.
.
Making the excuse that the process of fossilization is
not well understood is pitiful, and imagining these Montana sediments escaping
millions of years of mountain uplift, erosion and climate change is a big stretch.
Though airtight amber sometimes preserves all
the details of an insect, it is incredibly improbable that soft,
pliable tissues from a large dinosaur could be preserved in a sedimentary matrix for
10,000 years, let alone 70 million. Somebody ought to press the point.
The BBC explains why: Normally when an animal dies, worms and bugs will
quickly eat up anything that is soft. Then, as the remaining bone material gets
buried deeper and deeper in the mud, it gets heated, crushed and replaced by minerals,
turning it to stone. Schweitzer said in the NG coverage that
our theories of how fossils are preserved dont allow for this [soft-tissue preservation].
The pathetic response of some scientists, upon hearing this announcement, is that the
soft tissue recovery might help them construct better phylogenetic trees. They seem
oblivious to the fact that the data threaten to cut off the long-age limb they are
sitting on.
Here is an opportunity for young-earth creationists to make a strong case.
Its easier to prove an upper limit than a lower limit: e.g., that under the
best of conditions, cells or blood vessels could not be older than a maximum number of years
based on lab observations. No reader could claim by observation
that they could last millions of years. Thus, the young-age position is more
conservative, cautious and empirically based.
Someone should also apply carbon dating to the tissues and see if any C-14 is
present. It would be below the detection threshold if the bone is as old as claimed.
Watch the efforts to find out if DNA is still present, which cannot survive
that long according to Derek Briggs in the News@Nature article. These are two
predictions that can be tested.
This find
is making it easier to believe that dinosaurs actually lived in relatively recent times and
were buried quickly by a watery catastrophe just as a Biblical chronology indicates.
Dramatic as this announcement is, it is not the first. Creationists
have followed up on soft-tissue claims for years. In 1994, Buddy Davis and a team
endured danger and hardship recovering hadrosaur bones in
Alaska that contained unfossilized tissue; their story is published in
The
Great Alaskan Dinosaur Adventure. Then there was the announcement in all the papers
10/15/2002 about mummified dinosaur remains. Even more remarkable
was the BBC News story about
mummified soft parts found in a crustacean claimed to be 511 million years old 
over seven times older than the dinosaurs on the evolutionary scale (see
07/20/2001 entry). That such announcements
are rare in the secular literature does not mean that the fossils are rare; Jack
Horner said in the NG article that other dinosaurs are probably similarly
preserved, but workers in the field are usually reluctant to damage dinosaur bones to
look inside (maybe partly because they dont expect to find soft tissue after
millions of years). What this story
illustrates is how scientists tend to find what they expect to find, look for what
they need to find, and ask the questions prompted by their worldview.
Its instructive to notice who was surprised by todays announcement.
Next headline on:Dinosaurs  Fossils
 Dating Methods

One bad habit we need to help the media overcome is the practice of putting
ism on creation but not on evolution, but for USA Today, this was a surprisingly balanced article;
it consisted largely of a back-and-forth series of charges and responses from both
sides. Lets put some of the claims through the
Baloney Detector:

Gerry Wheeler (Natl. Science Teachers Assn): Im hoping it will give teachers the energy to make sure they stand for
high-quality science teaching  non-sequitur;
evolution has nothing to do with the quality of science teaching. Good science teachers promote
critical thinking, not indoctrination.

USA Today: To most scientists, evolution is defined as changes in genes that lead to the
development of species.  equivocation.
Evolution is much more than change; it is the claim that all of life has common ancestry in one or
a few original life forms that came from non-living chemicals. Bandwagon:
do most scientists really feel this way? Where are the numbers? Even if this claim is
correct, what most scientists think is not the issue, but what position the evidence supports.

USA Today: They see it as a fundamental insight in biology 
subjectivity. How a scientist or teacher feels about
a belief is irrelevant. An insight is only a hunch or preference till proved right.

USA Today: Creationism is the belief that species have divine origin 
straw man. Fixity of species is not what creationists believe.

USA Today: Alberts complains that creationists, under the guise of intelligent design,
have attempted to push evolution out of textbooks and classrooms in 40 states 
big lie. No one is trying to push evolution out.
They are trying to add critique of evolutionary theory and give alternatives a chance.

Alberts: one of the foundations of modern science is being neglected or
banished outright from science classrooms in many parts of the United States 
glittering generalities, big lie
and fear mongering. Again, evolution is not being
banished, and if teachers are neglecting it, it is their own problem (perhaps inability to
answer the questions perceptive students are asking), not due to laws or pressure.
Alberts is turning parents and students into bogeymen, when they are just acting as good
citizens and getting involved in a controversial issue that affects their lives. Just let Alberts show all
the evidence for evolution and explain his statement about the factory of molecular machines,
and tell us how it came about by chance. The foundations of modern science were laid
by Christians and creationists (see online book) long before Charlie
and his Musketeers usurped control of the scientific institutions.

Stephen Meyer: My first reaction is were seeing evidence of some panic among the official
spokesmen for science  a fair assessment; why else would opponents of ID resort
to fear-mongering and pressure?

Meyer: intelligent design is not creationism but a scientific approach more
open-minded than Charles Darwins theory of evolution  equivocal and potentially
misleading unless terms are defined, which Meyer and other ID leaders have done elsewhere.
Creationism has become an unpopular buzzword that
ID leaders avoid, but Meyer is right
that ID is not concerned with the who or how of creation, but only with
design detection. It is true also that ID is more open-minded, because it does not
rule out intelligent causes a priori.

USA Today: Biologists retort that any reproducible data validating intelligent design
would be welcome in science journals  big lie.
Why the uproar, then, when an intelligent-design paper passed peer review and was published
in a legitimate science journal? (see 12/28/2004 entry
and links). In spite of the bias against overt ID, many papers do publish implicit evidences of
exquisite design in living things, with no attempt to give it an evolutionary explanation
(see 03/14/2005 and 03/11/2005
entries from many examples in the archives here).

Jeffrey Palmer: If there were indeed deep flaws in parts of evolutionary biology,
then scientists would be the first to charge in there  half
truth. We have printed a number of stories about scientific papers by evolutionists
pointing out serious flaws with evolutionary theory (try 02/16/2005,
12/30/2004, 11/29/2004 and
08/05/2004 entries, to say nothing of dozens of stories about
fossil problems, molecular genetics problems and complexities in life inexplicable by Darwinism
or neo-Darwinism). On the other hand, scientists are usually strangely silent about these
problems when called as expert witnesses by courts or school boards.

Meyer: There are powerful institutional and systematic conventions in science that keep
(intelligent) design from being considered a scientific process  he has evidence of this
from his own recent experience and that of double-PhD editor Richard Sternberg (see
Sternberg website).

Barbara Forrest: Oh, baloney; they arent published because they dont have
any scientific data  big, big lie and
bluffing.

Alberts: In his letter, Alberts criticizes Lehigh University biochemist
Michael Behe, a leading proponent of intelligent design, as being representative of
the common tactic of misrepresenting scientists comments to cast
doubts on evolution  half truth; quoting
opponents as hostile witnesses is a legitimate debating technique; Alberts is
bluffing that Behe misrepresents them; let him
provide an example.

Behe: Behe calls this outrageous, saying he simply points out
that even establishment scientists note the complexity of biological structures 
a fair response, since there is plenty of documentation right here to support Behes
assertion.

Susan Spath: proponents need to work together more proactively in educating
the public about these issues. The silver lining may be that this is an
opportunity to enhance public understanding of science 
glittering generalities and positive spin
doctoring. Nice sentiments, if the pro-Darwinists would follow her advice.
If the public got educated about these issues they would throw the Darwinist rascals
out. We know from experience what the NCSE means: stifle debate, put up a
facade, shield student eyes from incriminating evidence, redefine science as
naturalistic philosophy, and demonize all opponents. The last thing they want
to do is show students the real scientific evidence, until in graduate school they
have passed the temple rituals and sworn allegiance to Pope Charlie.

Parents, teachers and scientists who are unhappy with the Darwinist arm of the
Democratic Party (see 12/02/2004)
and how they usurped control over the scientific institutions (see
10/24/2002 entry, and
12/22/2003, 01/15/2004
and 01/05/2004 commentaries) had
better understand the tactics of their opposition and be prepared to confront them.
Remember that the goal is more and better science. Dont let them portray
this debate as trying to banish evolutionary teaching. If anything
has been banished, it is criticism of his highness King Charlie the Usurper by the ruling Darwinist elites.
The battle is to allow more evidence to be heard, and help students learn to
evaluate all the evidence with critical thinking skills.
So now youve seen the head of the prestigious National
Academy of Sciences, a man who knows intimately the complexity of the cell, bluff his
way past the opposition as if taking personal charge of a crusade. It shows that
the battle over origins is a major issue in educational policy with important ramifications
for all of us. Concerned citizens need to get informed and involved.
Dont underestimate the power of the Darwin Party, but if you are well armed
with evidence, dont let them intimidate you, either.
Next headline on:Evolution  Intelligent Design 
Education

The emergence of
translation was obviously associated with expansion to a triplet
code and selective pressures that led to codon assignments using
the third position that minimize susceptibility to adverse effects
of mutation and errors in translation. Furthermore, translation
requires an association of amino acids with their anticodons [i.e., the base-paired
RNA negatives of codons on the DNA] not
with their codons. There are many ways in which these next steps
toward translation might have occurred, and we have not yet
examined these possibilities in detail. One intriguing possibility
is that amino acids might be removed from their dinucleotide
catalysts by transesterification to the 2 hydroxyl of an RNA
oligonucleotide. If this oligonucleotide were to recognize the
base-pairing surface of the dinucleotide with a complementary
sequence, then transesterification would lead to attachment of
an amino acid to an RNA containing its anticodon. This would
result in an early version of a charged tRNA. Furthermore, the
base following the doublet anticodon would be equivalent to the
third position of an anticodon in a triplet code in which there was
as yet no information content associated with the third position. (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

Another something-for-nothing paper on a different subject was proposed in Nature
last week.2 Ricard Sole pondered the puzzle of the origin of syntax
in language, the so-called communicative Big Bang unique to humans.
He was intrigued by a suggestion in a Royal Society paper that
a simple word-object association matrix can provide the basis for syntax almost for
free. For instance, the words eat and meat overlap
with the meaning edible organic matter, even though one is a verb and one is
a noun. If all the linked words are arranged in a matrix, they start forming word
networks that may have been the beginnings of syntax. Add to that the fact that,
according to Zipfs law, the frequency of appearance of a word is proportional to
its generality, and a basis for the emergence of syntax can be envisioned: the possibility
that early protolanguage might have been ready-made for the development of a
full syntax. They admit that this is only a very rough way of associating
symbols, but hope that further studies might find this suggestion useful:

The study also suggests that Zipfs law could have been a precondition for syntax and
symbolic communication. Once such a condition was met, the basis for the combinatorial explosion
characteristic of human language was ready for selection to shape it. The new theory will
be subject to debate, but the remnants of the communicative Big Bang are evidently hiding
somewhere inside modern language networks.

1Copley, Smith and Morowitz, A mechanism for the association of amino
acids with their codons and the origin of the genetic code,
Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences USA, published online before print March 11, 2005,
doi 10.1073/pnas.0501049102.2Ricard Sole, Language: Syntax for free?
Nature
Nature 434, 289 (17 March 2005); doi:10.1038/434289a.

We can lump these two theorieshypotheses suggestions into the category of MCS proposals
(mighta, coulda, shoulda). William Dembski proved rigorously in
No Free Lunch that
information must always come from prior information. He also exposed the
tricksters who try to sneak it in the back door to fool people that you can get
something for nothing. Here are two information-rich systems  the genetic code
and human language  that pose daunting challenges to the Darwinists.
Both suggestions presented in these papers are fatally flawed, because by sneaking
information in surreptitiously, hoping we wouldnt notice, they
violate their own naturalistic requirements. Both
failures strengthen the case for intelligent design.
Morowitz proposal is so easily falsified it is surprising that
someone of his reputation couldnt see through it. Did you notice that
he tried to sneak natural selection before it is allowed? (see online
book). The emergence of translation... Hold it
right there! No miracle words allowed. Emergence is not an
explanation. It is a circular argument that
presupposes what he needs to prove, that the genetic code, and its elaborate translation
apparatus, is amenable to a naturalistic
explanation. But we digress. The emergence of translation was
obviously [speak for yourself, buddy] associated with expansion to a triplet
code and selective pressures that led to codon assignments...
Aha! There it is, in black and white: selective pressures. Foul.
There are no
selective pressures without presuming the very thing he needs to explain: an accurate
translation and replication process that can preserve carbon-copy descendents that
will maintain any gains in functional information. That disqualifies this
proposal at the outset, but there are more problems with it. He only gets
an excess of one hand: not good enough. It must be 100% pure (see online
book). He only gets pairs of dinucleotides with simple amino acids: such
entities contain no value for a code, because there is no syntax. They are
as worthless as scattered Scrabble letters shuffled by chance. Despite their
knowledge of chemistry, Morowitz et al. have offered nothing more than a
weak, implausible, partial suggestion that presupposes the very thing they need to
prove and is disqualified because, by sneaking in miracle words, it
contradicts its own naturalistic presuppositions.
The second article tries to explain the origin of syntax by chance,
this time in the sphere of human language. Again, it is only the meagerest of suggestions,
a flimsy straw tossed to slay Leviathan. The origin of language has no
evolutionary explanation, only just-so stories that replace each other from
time to time. The observations show 17 distinct language groups with
no relation to one another, just as would be expected from a Tower of Babel incident;
each is complex with grammar, syntax and vocabulary, with no precursors or analogs
in the animal kingdom. The suggestion that Zipfs law is a precondition
of syntax assumes what they need to prove. In short, their word-association game theory is a paltry offering that
fails to bridge the gap between eat meat and the sophisticated abstract
reasoning of human beings. They missed their day in court; human evolution was already falsified
on genetic grounds (see 12/30/2004 entry)
and logical grounds (see 02/16/2005 entry).
It was put out of business as just another free-lunch scam (02/18/2005).
Therefore we must reject this latest myth as too little, too late.
Both these stories would never pass peer review if it were not for
the Darwinists need to bridge the canyon between chance and design, between
meaninglessness and meaning. They get published in hope that they might help
prop up the reigning world view. To them, progress in
science is made by proposing partial answers, no matter how implausible, that might
be assembled some day into a complete something-from-nothing theory of everything
(see helicopter in the canyon analogy, 05/22/2002
commentary). Without the requirement of naturalistic philosophy, both logic and common
experience lead the honest observer out of the dark cave into the light of day.
How does one get a code? How does a communicative Big Bang happen?
Not from nothing, not by emergence, but from prior, superior Information.
Let the Darwin Party name one exception without assuming the philosophy of naturalism.
Next headline on:Genetics and DNA  Origin of Life 
Early Man

Public Not Patronizing Evolution-Based IMAX Films 03/23/2005
Mark Looy at Answers
in Genesis comments on reports that some IMAX movie theaters are dropping
evolution-based films because the public is taking offense at them. Looy
denies that religious fundamentalists or creation organizations are
putting any pressure on the theaters. He claims this is just an informal
grass-roots response by viewers who are becoming increasingly aware of the
controversy over evolution.Update 03/29/2005: Alan Leshner, AAAS president, wrote
his colleagues expressing strong concerns over this trend, reports
EurekAlert.
The desire not to antagonize audiences and to avoid negative business
outcomes is entirely understandable. he conceded. Yet, the suppression of scientifically
accurate information as a response to those with differing perspectives
is inappropriate and threatens both the integrity of science and the
broader public education to which we all are committed. He applauded
the Forth Worth theater that reversed its decision to withdraw the film Volcanoes
of the Deep Sea.

What if they threw a Darwin Party and nobody
came? The Darwinists must be running scared if their traditional propaganda
markets are drying up. They cant force people to buy IMAX tickets,
and no amount of big-budget special effects can compensate for distasteful ideas.
Nobody desires the suppression of scientifically accurate information,
Dr. Leshner; thats what this controversy is all about. The public doesnt
like indoctrination into evolutionary just-so stories presented as if they were facts.
Heres the solution: make films with debate instead of
indoctrination. People like a good fight. The creation side
typically gives the best evolutionary arguments and then rebuts them.
Darwinists, even if they mention any controversy at all, either dispute other committed
evolutionists, or set up
straw
men or
red herrings
without really dealing seriously with the main issues.
Heres another suggestion for IMAX theater managers.
Want to pack the places out? Commission IMAX versions of the films
Unlocking the Mystery of Life and
The Privileged Planet.
Based on the track records of these films, you would probably
attract busloads of interested people, who would come back with all their
friends. Even more would come just to find out what the commotion is
about as a few Darwinists picket outside,
chantingEvolution is a fact,
read this place the riot act; ask me how I know its true, teacher said
designs taboo.
Next headline on:Media and Movies  Evolution

Every dating method requires making certain
assumptions. Here, a pillar assumption has been toppled, and now they dont
know what to think, except that whatever revised date they come up with must fit
the Sacred Parameter, the age of the solar system: 4.5 billion years: no questions
asked.
Next headline on:Dating Methods  Mars

Native Americans are not typically sympathetic to Nazi ideas. How do you think
this troubled young man got his head filled with philosophies of hate?
Lets role play what happens next (after, of course, the incident is blamed
on the availability of guns, which is already underway, or on poverty,
even though many from bad backgrounds turn out to be sterling citizens).
Youre a
Darwin Party grief counselor assigned to explain this atrocious act to the terrified
students and give them advice how to deal with it. What do you tell them?
Click here to send in your suggestions.

Predators and prey have always been part of the scheme of things; while
I understand you feel sorry for your classmates, you can take comfort in the fact
that you survived among the fittest (or the luckiest).

Jeff was just acting out his understanding of natural selection, maybe by hastening
it a little too fast. We each need to come up with our own way of cooperating
with the principles of evolution.

Jeff couldnt help himself because his frontal lobe was not fully developed.
It was the last thing to evolve in our ancestry from apes. (See
03/08/2005 entry.)

We need to understand that our prejudices may not be correct. Violence, for
instance, can be a good thing. Its the method nature used to produce
human beings in the first place. We need to be willing to accept the distasteful
fallout of this creative natural process, because look how much good came from it.

You can pray if you feel the need to. Nobody is listening, but it appears that natural
selection has produced warm feelings in the brain when we pretend.

Genetic mutations have been known to cause Homo sapiens sapiens to do things
that other, less-evolved Homo sapiens sapiens may perceive as evil.

This is your brain; this is your brain on evolution, in a undeveloped, less
culpable state.

The in-your-face attitude of National Geographic
about evolution, with every claim getting sensational coverage more art than science,
may be having a backlash (see 11/29/2002 entry);
was this the last salvo by outgoing editor Bill Allen?
(See 02/15/2005 entry).
We already knew that National Geographic was playing fast and loose with
this H. florensiensis fossil (see
12/01/2004 entry); they are perhaps the
worst of all the lying reporters (see 11/29/2004
entry) because of their long track record of storytelling with artwork when the
data does not justify it. A picture is worth a thousand blurs (see
visualization in the Baloney Detector).National Geographic is slow to mention various important points:
(1) Fossils can be distorted by geology (see
03/28/2003 entry), especially these that
were found in a delicate state as fragile as wet blotting paper.
(2) The questionable dating of early-man specimens
(see 02/16/2005 entry, for example)
sometimes leads to absurd conclusions
(see 02/18/2005 entry). (3) Variations
among living humans (pygmy, Watusi, tall, short, thin, stout, etc.) could be
enough to give paleoanthropologists a field day of classifying them into different
species and evolutionary lineages if they were only known from skeletons; how much
more so the flimsy remains of skeletons from the past, or the variations between
Homo erectus (see 03/21/2002),
Neanderthal (10/01/2004) and modern humans?
(4) All fossil hominids could fit within the expected range of variation
of a single species, according to one researcher (see 01/01/2005
and 05/24/2004 entries).
Remember when Jeff Schwartz called Homo erectus a mythical
classification?
(5) Most paleoanthropologists base their work on flawed assumptions, warned
Leslie Hlusko last year (02/19/2004).
(6) Most of the early man artwork that disgraced earlier NG covers in the
60s and 70s has been debunked, and old assumptions have been replaced by new
questions (11/05/2003).
Have they learned anything? Apparently
not much more than how to make even more realistic cartoons; teen voyeurs are
sure to get a rush out of the current issue. How do they know these tribes
didnt wear fashionable dragon-skin robes as they talked philosophy and
politics around the campfire?
Because National Geographic avoids these damaging points, and
concentrates on art and storytelling more than data, they
cannot be trusted as an impartial source. They are
bent on spinning any skull into a yarn about evolution, even though human evolution
has already been falsified (see 12/30/2004 and
11/18/2004 entries). Although they began
asking some good questions about Dmanisi man back in 2002 (see 08/01/2002
entry), they made it look as primitive as possible this time. And they leapt upon the Hobbit
find way too early, long before it has been subjected to critical analysis and
peer review. Black people should
be incensed over the racist representation of the smaller-than-normal population of human
beings. Its time for sensible people to flood NG again with
well-written, cogently-argued letters to the editor. Dont ask them
to censor reports about fossils; insist, rather, that they present all the
data, including the parts that undermine their favorite storytelling plots.
Let the new editor Chris Johns know you expect accuracy in media.
Next headline on:Early Man

Fossil horses have held the limelight as evidence for evolution for several
reasons. First, the familiar modern Equus is a beloved icon that
provides a model for understanding its extinct relatives.
Second, horses are represented by a relatively continuous and widespread
55-My [million-year] evolutionary sequence. And third, important fossils
continue to be discovered and new techniques developed that advance our knowledge
of the Family Equidae. The fossil horse sequence is likely to remain a popular
example of a phylogenetic pattern resulting from the evolutionary process.

The evolution of which McFadden speaks is not simple variation  after all,
there is a great deal of size and shape variation among modern horses, from Shetlands
to Clydesdales  but macroevolution,
or higher level (species, genera, and above) evolutionary patterns that occur
on time scales ranging from thousands to millions of years. Here, he is
convinced, horses remain the definitive case: The speciation, diversification,
adaptations, rates of change, trends, and extinction evidenced by fossil horses
exemplify macroevolution.
To the chart: what picture does McFadden exhibit compared to the
old icon? Like Wells, he debunks orthogenesis:

The sequence from the Eocene dawn horse eohippus to modern-day Equus
has been depicted in innumerable textbooks and natural history museum exhibits.
In Marshs time, horse phylogeny was thought to be linear (orthogenetic),
implying a teleological destiny for descendant species to progressively improve,
culminating in modern-day Equus. Since the early 20th century, however,
paleontologists have understood that the pattern of horse evolution is a
more complex tree with numerous side branches, some leading to
extinct species and others leading to species closely related to Equus.
This branched family tree (see the figure) is no longer explained in terms of predestined
improvements, but rather in terms of random genomic variations, natural selection,
and long-term phenotypic changes.

The figure shows most of the fossils being contemporaries of one another in the upper
third of the timeline, with grazers and
feeders and browsers exhibiting a large diversification in body size
scattered among the branches. Only
Hyracotherium and Mesohippus occupy the basal position in the tree.
Yet Wells pointed out that orthogenesis is still implicit in the new charts, regardless
of the side branches, if there is a trunk leading from eohippus to Equus.
And he emphasized that both paradigms, straight-line and branching evolution, remain
philosophical positions rather than observations.
To the bones: what new fossils
and revised interpretations of old fossils justify McFaddens assertion that
the horse series exemplifies macroevolution? The complexity of the horse evolution
picture becomes apparent when he points out that only one genus, Equus survives,
while three dozen genera and several hundred species have gone extinct.2
Furthermore, most of the alleged macroevolution occurred in North America, where
horses went extinct but survived in the Old World. What evidence has come to light
since the branching bush paradigm replaced the old icon? While
diversity is evident, macroevolution seems a matter of viewpoint:

Although the overall branched pattern of horse phylogeny (see the figure) has remained
similar for almost a century, new discoveries and reinterpretation of
existing museum fossil horse collections have added to the known diversity of
extinct forms. Recent work reveals that Eocene hyracothere horses,
previously known as eohippus or Hyracotherium, include an early
diversification of a half- dozen genera that existed between 55 and 52 Ma [milli-annum,
million years] in North America and Europe. New genera have recently been
proposed for the complex middle Miocene radiation, although the validity
of these genera is still debated.

The truth is in the teeth, he concludes: Horse teeth frequently preserve as
fossils and are readily identifiable taxonomically. They serve as objective evidence
of the macroevolution of the Equidae. Yet his discussion reveals that,
although the teeth of these animals display considerable variety, The tempo of this
morphological evolution has sometimes been slow and at other times rapid.
The final third of the chart shows groups branching out with teeth designed for grazing
and others designed for browsing or feeding on both grasses and leaves.
What he terms explosive adaptive diversification in tooth morphology appears to have
doubtful justification, since most of the species on the chart overlapped in time.
McFadden mentions nothing else in support of horse evolution, but spends
a paragraph debunking an old evolutionary myth: Copes Rule. Cope and other
early evolutionists seemed to assume bigger is better: ancestors were small, descendents
got larger over time; this notion is now known to be incorrect,
he says. In his chart, horses got larger at first, but since 20 ma ago,
In contrast, from 20 Ma until the present, fossil horses were more diverse in their
body sizes. Some clades became larger (like those that gave rise to Equus),
others remained relatively static in body size, and others became smaller over time.
Nevertheless, as stated earlier, he concludes on the positive note that The fossil
horse sequence is likely to remain a popular example of a phylogenetic pattern resulting
from the evolutionary process. But is a popular example the same thing as an
experts example?
1Bruce McFadden, Fossil Horses--Evidence for Evolution,
Science,
Vol 307, Issue 5716, 1728-1730 , 18 March 2005, [DOI: 10.1126/science.1105458].2It must be recalled that identifying species from fossils is highly
subjective, since interfertility cannot be established; todays quarter horses
and Belgians might be assigned to different species based on skeletal remains, yet
are interfertile.

Whats wrong with this picture? The horse evolution icon,
like Rasputin, has been shot, stabbed and drowned, but is taking his time to get dead.
Here is one of the classic proofs of evolution, explicated by Mr. Horse Evolution himself,
and are you convinced? Saying this is proof of evolution doesnt make it so.
Better look this gift horse in the mouth.
Consider some salient points. (1) Extinction is not evolution.
If a creature abruptly appears in the fossil record, survives for a time, then goes
extinct, no evolution has occurred, in the macro sense. (2) If animals appeared and
existed as contemporaries, they cannot be arranged into ancestral relationships.
(3) If they existed on different continents, it becomes a stretch to assume they shared
genetic information. (4) Assigning skeletons to different species is a highly
subjective process  and therefore subject to ones presuppositions.
(5) The dating of these fossils assumes evolution and long ages  a case of
circular reasoning. (5) Variations in teeth
adapted for different feeding habits reveal nothing about the origins of teeth.
Teeth are very complex structures (see 03/13/2003
and 06/04/2002 entries). (6) Terms like explosive adaptive
diversification assume evolution; they explain nothing about how random mutations
could have produced simultaneous morphological changes that all had adaptive value.
(7) Interestingly, McFadden omits any mention of horse toes. The old picture
showed three-toed horses evolving into one-hooved horses of today. But even
that begs the question of whether one toe is better (or more evolved) than three;
it almost seems backward. Duane Gish in Evolution: The Fossils Still Stay No
points out that in the evolutionary story of ungulates, the picture is reversed:
ungulates supposedly evolved three toes from one. (8) The basal clade Hyracotherium has doubtful
relationship to horses at all. Its position in the horse tree is merely for
evolutionary wish fulfillment, to put something in the blank. If omitted, most
of the rest of the Equidae become contemporaries. Furthermore,
there is a big gap between Hyracotherium and anything preceding it, so where did
it evolve from? (9) McFaddens analysis only considers size, teeth, and location.
How did the remarkable capabilities of the horse, like catapulting legs
(01/02/2003) and damping muscles
(12/20/2001)arise by chance? (10) If you
think this story is pathetic, the whole mammal phylogenetic tree is a mess (see
05/28/2002, 12/03/2003
and 03/18/2003 entries).
In the Peanuts cartoon, Linus once asked Lucy to read him a bedtime story.
Exasperated by his persistent pleas, she blurted out, A man was born, he lived
and he died. Linus contemplated, Makes you wish you could have
known the fellow. Dry bones in the ground dont say much. Evolutionists,
unsatisfied with the starkness of the raw data, enjoy the entertainment of weaving
fanciful tales in between the bones.
In short, McFadden seems committed to rescuing his beloved icon from
the withering attacks of both creationists and other evolutionists, so that he can
announce triumphantly in Science that the rockets red glare and
bombs bursting in air only serve to give proof through the nighttime of data
that the icon is still there. But enough of storytelling. Get a horse.
Go for a ride and clear your head of evolutionary confusion. Horses are wonderful animals,
full of grace, humor, expression, strength and majesty. Learn some incredible
things about horses in the new film
Incredible
Creatures that Defy Evolution III. Thank God for the horse, one of
mans most capable and faithful companions on earth.
Next headline on:Mammals  Fossils 
Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory.

Kellams distorted Martins words in her article
to emphasize any possible religious motivation behind it, even though the bill explicitly
stated that intelligent design theory, Does not claim that science can determine the identity of
the intelligent cause, nor does it claim that the intelligent cause must be a
divine being or a higher power or an all-powerful force. She wrote:

Martin, who is a biomechanical engineer, said hes not sure about the
theory of evolution but that theres enough scientific evidence to
show that theres a lot of truth to it. I dont
consider it in conflict with my strict Christian beliefs, or, quite frankly,
my belief in the inerrancy of Scripture, he said. I dont believe
that they have to be in conflict. I dont have the answers to that stuff.
Martins own school-aged daughter is taught at home because he wants her education to be
Bible-based, he said.

This selection is a case study in reporter bias.

In the first place, she took his words out of context, because his uncertainty was
about microevolution, not Darwinian macroevolution. Small-scale variation is what he told
her was not in conflict with his Christian beliefs. She left out his elaboration about
robust engineering and optimum design that explained his position more fully. By omitting
this key distinction between micro and macro, she made it seem like he was wishy-washy about evolution in general.

Secondly, she cropped a quote:
he said, I dont have all the answers to that stuff, and neither do the
Darwinists. By omitting that last phrase, she portrayed him as uninformed
and indecisive.

Thirdly, she ended her article with the Bible-based home-schooling item,
making it appear he said this as part of the interview, when in fact he said
it earlier during the campaign when asked why he home schooled his children.
Including this irrelevant detail used the power of suggestion
to make it seem Martin was trying to impose his
beliefs on students but keep his own children out of the public schools.

Lastly, Kellams omitted the political shenanigans of the Speaker of the House who
intentionally doomed the bill in the Rules Committee to avoid giving it a fair hearing.

With these tricks, Kellams perpetuated the media
stereotype that opposition to evolution is religiously motivated, and deflected attention from
the many and profound vulnerabilities of Darwinism (see our
curriculum).
Our original commentary on this story was very derogatory toward Martin,
being based on Kellams article, because his religious statements
seemed destined to feed the media stereotype, and portrayed him as uninformed about the
meaning and intent of intelligent design theory. As such, it appeared his actions in
the legislature would do more harm than good. Rep. Mark Martin contacted
Creation-Evolution Headlines to clarify what he actually said and meant and
what had happened to his bill in Committee. His input changed the picture substantially.
We apologize to Rep. Martin and turn our criticism where it belongs, to the biased
reporting in the media.

For a humorous lesson on the fine art of vituperation, read how David
Berlinski dealt with a hot-headed critic: see
EvolutionNews.org.
The critic blasted him for spouting misconceptions, deceptions and lies.
Berlinski is a master of adroitness with words. Calmly but firmly, he put the loudmouth
in his place. Dont try this at home unless you are good at it and know
what you are talking about.

Lets hope E.T. has his spam filter on.
Hey, Nigeria! Hey, Star Registry! Look at all these suckers waiting
for your services.
Why do you suppose so many for this offer?
Evolutionary indoctrination, perhaps? Some philanthropist should get the address list
and offer these poor folk free copies of Gary Bates hot new book
Alien Intrusion:
UFOs and the Evolution Connection. Throw in the
video, too.
Next headline on:SETI 
Dumb Stories

Although breeder stars formed within a few hundred million years of the Big Bang,
life here on Earth took its time. Our Sun  a third generation star of
modest mass  formed some nine-billion years later. Life-forms developed
a little more than one billion years after that. As this occurred, molecules
combined to form organic compounds which  under suitable conditions  joined
together as amino acids, proteins, and cells. During all this one layer of
complexity was added to another and creatures became ever more perceptive
of the world around them. Eventually  after more billions
of years  vision developed. And vision  added to an subjective
sense of awareness  made it possible for the Universe to look back at itself. (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

Barbour makes no hint that a Creator might have had anything to do with any stage of this
scenario, except for a brief mention in a footnote, surrounded by some strange statements
(indicated by [?]):

That life develops from less sophisticated to more sophisticated forms is a
question beyond scientific dispute. Precisely how this process takes place is an
issue of deep division in human society. Astronomers  unlike biologists 
are not required to hold any particular theory on this issue. [?] Whether chance
mutation and natural selection drives the process or some unseen hand
exists to bring such things about is outside the realm of astronomical inquiry.
Astronomers are interested in structures, conditions, and processes in the universe at large.
As life becomes more salient to that discussion, astronomy  in particular exobiology 
will have more to say about the matter. [?] But the very fact that astronomers can allow
nature to speak on such issues as a sudden and instantaneous creation ex nihilo in
the form of a Big Bang shows just how flexible astronomical thinking is in regard to ultimate origins. [?]

High schoolers might be offended by the offhand way Barbour makes them seem dumber than
bacteria: Consider the high school chemistry lab experiments where hydrogen and
oxygen gas are combined, heated then explode. Primitive life forms had to learn
to handle this very volatile stuff in a far safer manner  putting phosphorus to
task in the conversion of ADP to ATP and back again. How said primitive life forms
learned how to invent ATP synthase
(see 02/23/2005 entry), or any of the other molecular
machines in the simplest life forms we know about (see 03/14/2005
and 03/11/2005 entries), he does not explain.

Theres nothing new or original here that makes
this embarrassing litany of shameless bravado worth mentioning, except as an exercise for young
Baloney Detectors who had better get armed against stupidity while young, because
theyre going to get a lot of it in public school or on TV.
This piece is so lame, so full of deification of Nature
and glittering generalities
and bluffing, one wonders if Barbour
wrote it in mockery of Tyson and the cosmic evolution genre in general.
Since he apparently was dead serious, we might as well have some fun with it.
It should make your Baloney Detector click like a Geiger counter in Chernobyl.
The hard part is trying to figure out which lines would not win Stupid Evolution
Quote of the Week.
Parents, teachers, print out Barbours little fairy tale, print
out the Baloney Detector, get colored pens and have at it. How many times does he
confidently assert things without evidence? How many wiggle words are there
(maybe, probably, might have, etc.)? How many times does he personify Nature
or lower life forms, empowering them with creative genius just because there is a need?
How many times does he wave the magic wand of millions of years, as if time alone works
wonders? How many cases of miracle words or phrases (arose, emerged, joined,
formed, took form) does he use? How many claims are contradicted by observational
evidence? (surfing through Creation-Evolution Headlines archives can be helpful here).
Younger students might like to draw silly cartoons in the margins, or put on
a puppet show, perhaps with Miss Piggy reading selections of this essay with Shakespearean flair,
and Kermit interrupting occasionally to ask tough questions. Maybe Dr. Bunsen Honeydew
and Beaker would work as well.
When done having fun, click on the Discuss this story link at the end
of the Universe
Today article and let other readers,
many not as precocious as your student, be granted at least a modicum of enlightenment.
Next headline on:Cosmology 
Evolution 
Origin of Life 
Dumb Stories

Religion and Charity Evolved, Claim Darwinists 03/16/2005
Charity begins at Homo sapiens, quips Mark Buchanan in
New
Scientist, noting that only human beings exhibit true altruism
(i.e., helping genetic strangers, such as those suffering from the Asian tsunamis)
when such behavior cannot help the individual pass on his or her genes.
He evaluates the various theories that evolutionary psychologists
have come up with to explain this Darwinian conundrum: why would a person in a
survival-of-the-fittest world sacrifice himself for the good of others?
Some think altruism was a maladaptation  a bad mutation 
an evolutionary dead end that is destined to fade (and is fading) in the
unpredictable path of human social evolution. Others try to find
some evolutionary good in it. After reviewing competing ideas without
arriving at a consensus, he says,

These findings suggest that true altruism, far from being a maladaptation, may be the
key to our species success by providing the social glue that allowed our ancestors
to form strong, resilient groups. It is still crucial for social cohesion in
todays very different world. Something like it had to evolve,
[Herbert] Gintis says.
(Emphasis added in all quotes.)

How Jesus evolved to teach that one should do good deeds in secret
(Matthew 6),
he does not explain.
Buchanan provides discussion notes for teachers who may be confronted by students with
theological questions:

3. TO PLEASE TEACHERS (AND GODS)
Despite our altruism, generosity may not be in our genes. If true altruism has
evolved through competition between groups, as some researchers maintain (see main story),
then it is more likely to be the product of cultural evolution. Genetic
evolution works by selecting individuals with traits that are well adapted to their
environment, but it has a far weaker grip on traits that benefit the group.
So altruism is more likely to be learned. After all, every human culture
invests considerable effort in instilling children with moral norms that help
further cooperation. Often these are enshrined in powerful religious beliefs
and reinforced by promises of salvation and threats of eternal damnation.

Either way, genetically or culturally, charity just evolved, he concludes. Religion
is just an artifact of social evolution to reinforce
the interplay of behaviors  cooperation, defection, punishment, reward  that
arose by unguided processes of evolution over millions of years.
A related claim about the evolution of religion was made on
EurekAlert.
The article, entitled Nature helps create religious adults, reports on work
published in the Journal of Personality by Laura B. Koenig et al..
They studied pairs of twins to see how their religiousness varied
over time.

Religiousness was tested using self-report of nine items that measured
the centrality of religion in their lives. The twins graded the frequency
in which they partook in religious activities such as reading scripture
or other religious material and the importance of religious faith in daily life.
They also reported on their mothers, their fathers, and their
own religiousness when they were growing up. They were also asked
to report on the current and past religiousness of their brother.
The factors were divided into subscales external aspects of religion, like observing
religious holidays, that might be the most susceptible to environmental influence and
internal aspects, like seeking help through prayer, that might be the most
susceptible to heritable influence. The external items were found to be
more environmentally and less genetically influenced during childhood, but more
genetically influenced in adulthood. The internal scale showed a similar
pattern, but the genetic influences seemed to be slightly larger in childhood
compared to the external scale and so more consistent across the two ages.
Like other personality traits, adult religiousness is heritable,
and though changes in religiousness occur during development, it is
fairly stable, the authors conclude.

Although this article does not mention evolution or Darwinism specifically, the implication is clear:
religiousness is a heritable trait passed along either through genetic or cultural
evolution.

Gintis gets Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week for
his sound bite, something like it [altruism] had to evolve.
To understand how just how absurd and
self-refuting
these claims are, turn the tables on the researchers. Lets perform a
statistical study on evolutionists about their Darwinishness. What social, genetic
and family influences contributed to the centrality of Darwinism in their lives? We could break the
factors into external aspects of Darwinishness, like observing
Darwin Day and telling
just-so stories at evolutionary conferences, that might be susceptible to environmental
influence, and internal aspects, like seeking help through meditating on The Origin of
Species that might be the most susceptible to heritable influence.
Checkmate.
Apart from the highly questionable statistical validity of any
study based on self-reporting by human children, who are far too complex and
manipulatable to provide any sound conclusions, and the contradictory and fallacious
ideas built on game theory (see 02/10/2004,
09/17/2003 and
09/05/2003 entries), these articles represent
the epitome of evolution as religion  a worldview reducing everything in the
universe to its philosophical assumptions. What these researchers are claiming is
appalling. Pastors, churchgoers, missionaries, teachers and anyone with a
genuine faith in God based on sound doctrine and evidence should rise up in horror
over this kind of nonsense and oppose it vigorously: first, because it is false; second, because it is
illogical; third, because it is elitist, and most of all, because it is dangerous.
If our deepest beliefs and desires, our most merciful actions, our most fervent
prayers and our highest moral values are all evolutionary artifacts of mutations
acting on genes, resulting in social glue that evolves in unpredictable ways, and if
people really started believing and acting on these assumptions,
not even an evolutionist would want to live in the kind of society that would result.
Not angry yet?
See also the next entry on ethics: how Darwinism is influencing
the law.
Next headline on:Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory  Politics
and Ethics  Dumb Stories

Mars Makeover Underway 03/16/2005
Amazing claims about Mars are coming in almost too fast to fathom, reports
Space.Com,
especially from the European Space Agencys Mars Express orbiter.
These include evidence for recently active volcanos, frozen ice beds,
methane and vestiges of glaciers and waterfalls. Activity is only
yesterday in the standard geological timescale. One said,
it could start up again tomorrow. Victor R. Baker (U. of Arizona)
also talks about these findings in Nature.1. See also
Mars still alive, experts agree on the
BBC News,
and a New Scientist
article that claims some of the activity may still be going on today.
The discussion about heat, methane
and water is also triggering more verbal outgassing about possible life on Mars.
Though it is becoming less likely to find life at the surface, Leonard David on
Space.com says, it is not unreasonable to suggest that life on Mars
not only emerged but could have survived to the present in underground niches.
1Victor R. Baker, Planetary science: Picturing a recently active Mars,
Nature
434, 280 - 283 (17 March 2005); doi:10.1038/434280a.

It would be very exciting to find active volcanos
on Mars, and would raise new questions about the age of the planet: how could a
smaller planet than Earth remain hot today? The halitosis from the media about
finding life comes from the Chef Charlie cookbook.
Recipe for life: heat rocks in a warm little pond till mud broth forms, sprinkle with
meteorites, then store in a cave and wait a few million years. When
methane is emitted, its done. Season with balderdash on a website.
Serves a million suckers.
Next headline on:Mars  Origin of Life

It may follow from demonstrably false dichotomies, such as nature versus nurture,
taking misleading hold in the public mind, he [Jones] said. It may also follow
from a variety of misunderstandings about how genes, environments and evolutionary processes
interact with implications for behavior. And it certainly has something to do with
fears about what the political implications  for racism, sexism, genetic determinism
and other evils  might be, based on the use or misuse of biological information.
(Emphasis added in all quotes.)

Apparently the authors refer to the old Social Darwinism that simply ranked people as fit or unfit.
The new evolutionary analysis in law (a term coined by Jones in 1995), however,
seeks only to help inform the fields of law, economics and other social sciences with the
latest scientific findings about human behavior.
In what areas might the biology of thinking (e.g., behavioral biology, neurology,
cognitive psychology) inform the law? The article gives these examples:

Such an approach might enhance understanding why some penalties are more effective
than others, how people make choices in areas such as environmental protection and
retirement savings, and what the underlying causes of aggression are and how
they help explain why young men are sometimes willing  even in the face of the
severest penalties  to kill in reaction to threats to their status.

How could this evolutionary biological analysis affect lawmaking?

In the article, Jones and Goldsmith explore how an understanding of current
behavioral biology research could improve the effectiveness of laws by
 among other things  identifying behavior patterns that would be useful
to understand when developing laws; revealing conflicts that exist between
innate human behavior and public policy written to regulate that behavior;
improving the cost-benefit analyses that are often used in developing laws; exposing
unwarranted assumptions; assessing the effectiveness of legal strategies; and
outlining deep patterns [i.e., biological patterns from evolutionary history]
in the legal architecture.

The Dean of Academic Affairs at Vanderbilt is pleased that this paper, published in a prestigious journal,
indicates that the field of law and behavioral biology has momentum in legal scholarship.
Though it is a small but growing field, evolutionary law will probably
get a boost from this paper, and will foster greater synthesis of life science and social science
perspectives. Owen Jones has joint appointments in Vanderbilts
law school and biology departments. He founded the Society for Evolutionary Analysis in Law
in 1997.

Be afraid  be very afraid  when the
Darwin Party writes the law. Why? Because they are biological
determinists, moral relativists and elitists. They do not believe that morals or responsibility exist except as
phantom artifacts of mutations and natural selection acting over millions of years.
Jones and Goldsmith spout enough placating words to sound harmless, as if they have the best of
intentions to merely prevent social evils (please define evil in
evolutionary terms) like racism and sexism. They just want to help the law
be more effective, right? But look down the road if consistent Darwinian theory
were to be applied to the very areas they listed:

Effective penalties: effective for whom? The communists were
experts in the development of effective penalties. If the penal
code becomes oriented for effectiveness instead of justice, be very, very afraid,
because effectiveness becomes defined in terms of the goals of the ones in power,
rather in terms of intrinsic right or wrong, justice, and mercy. Such terms
are undefined in the Darwin Dictionary. Brainwashing and psychology can be
very effective. And what is a penalty, if not a deserved punishment
for a sin? It becomes a tool in the hands of a Pavlov, a force an elitist
wields to elicit the response he wants from the human dog. One of the scariest
parts of the novel 1984 by George Orwell was when the inquisitor was able to
get Winston, under torture, to lie about how many fingers he was holding up: and
not just to lie, but to believe the lie. Truth became whatever the
powermonger wanted it to be. By contrast, American law and English common law
were built on the assumptions of natural rights from our Creator, and the existence
of truth and absolute moral standards derived from the Judeo-Christian scriptures.

Environmental protection: It is undeniable that evolutionary biologists,
who are 100% Democrats (see 12/02/2004 entry),
tend to view man as the villain in the ecology. People will get the shaft in
evolutionary law if the Elite Oligarchy, based on input from the Darwin Party soothsayers,
determines that a certain gnat needs protection.

Retirement savings: Here, the Darwinists view human vagaries between
the desire for immediate gratification vs. long term planning as evolutionary artifacts of ape in our
ancestry. Since people are unwitting subjects of the evolutionary forces of the
jungle, they cannot be expected to make sound choices on their own; they need the
Elitists to help them. And you thought that evolutionary theory had nothing to do
with the current debate over Social Security.

Causes of aggression: Carl Sagan used to talk about human tendencies
toward aggression and territoriality as stemming from the reptilian
part of our brain, another throwback to Haeckels recapitulation theory (see
03/08/2005 entry). Darwinists cannot fathom a concept
such as righteous anger or an axis of evil because these moral
judgments are disallowed from biological thinking by definition.
Aggression is just a biological observation with no moral overtones, no different
than a dog barking or a lizard hissing when threatened. Humans are incapable
of having moral motivations for aggression or for resistance to aggression,
because such categories do not exist. What happens in this line of reasoning?
Its all about power, not about right and wrong. The Darwinian Soothsayers
tell the Elitist Oligarchy how mysterious Charlie Forces can help them win in the
international pecking order, and what drugs to give the aggressive inmate to calm
him down so that he is easier to control. Being in control  that is the
new righteousness. It separates the elitists from the pawns.

Murder: To a Darwinist, young men full of testosterone and ape in
their brains are incapable of thinking rationally or make responsible choices.
So on the one hand, we cannot penalize them when they do what their biology makes
them do (see 03/08/2005 entry again), and on the other
hand, for the convenience of society, it might become necessary to sedate
troublemakers to keep them compliant.

Owen Jones looks like a gentleman in his suit and tie, a calm and erudite man of peace, but his ideas
are deadly and fallacious: fallacious, because if he just looked in the mirror
he would see biology so complex just in his eyes that defy evolutionary explanation;
deadly, because it is the utter absence of moral categories that makes Evolutionary Analysis
in Law a prospect more fearful than communist psychopolitics. Such beliefs
feed right into an elitist mindset.

If Jones were right that we were
just evolutionary products from an animal past, we would have to live with that eventuality and make the
best of it. But he isnt right and he could not be right. For proof
he isnt right, look at nearly five years of reporting from of the scientific
literature right here in these pages  there is hardly any category of evidence, from fossils to genes, that
does not challenge evolutionary theory at every level. And he could not be right,
because his arguments are
self-refuting.
If mind and intellect are products of mutations acting on molecules, then
truth and values have no ultimate validity. It is therefore disingenuous for
Jones to use words with moral connotations (like evil, false, misleading, misuse, improve, effective)
or even to make truth claims about what exists. He cannot escape the
Judeo-Christian assumptions that we live in a rational universe, and that as souls
possessing the divine image, we can make use of
universal laws of logic to discuss issues on an intellectual and moral level.
Even evolutionists act as if truth matters and has eternal validity, external to our
transient biology; otherwise, they could not even claim evolution is true.
Does a creation basis rule out all
behavioral study and consideration of human biological influences
when devising law? Of course not; if God created man as
an eternal soul inhabiting an animal-like body, coexisting with other animals in the
same world, it is to be expected that
we will share certain behavioral attributes with animals, such as fight vs. flight
responses (notice how adrenaline kicks in), imitation,
fear, mob psychology, authority and submission, sexual and food desires,
and other behaviors influenced by hormones and other biological factors.
Evolutionary reductionism
focuses on the biology but ignores the reality of the soul,
which is able to make a man or woman subjugate the biological urges and contemplate
truth, good, beauty, purpose and destiny. Humans are unique among physical
inhabitants of earth: we communicate in language, we think abstract thoughts,
we exercise true altruism (see 03/16/2005 entry),
we use logic, and we contemplate our place in the grand scheme of things.
These distinctively human activities are all mediated through and modulated by our
bodily faculties.
Creation-based law can and should take biological
influences under consideration; Solomon, for example, remarked that no
one despises a thief who steals bread because he is hungry. But only humans make laws,
and most laws presuppose that the moral categories of right and wrong are self-existent,
not biologically determined. We hold these truths to be self-evident,
the American founders wrote, that all men are created equal, and that
they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights;
that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And
to the protection of these rights they pledged their biology, their retirement
savings, and (something evolutionists cannot fathom) their sacred honor.

Jones and Goldsmith would probably denounce, in the most vociferous
terms, any association with Nazi and Stalinist ideologies or the nightmare scenarios
of 1984. But where is any essential difference in
foundational concepts? The worst mass murderers of the 20th century believed
that the law needed to be informed not by absolute standards
of right and wrong, but by evolutionary thinking. These modern intellectuals,
looking innocent in their academic gowns, might want to distance themselves from
the atrocities committed under those regimes, but since the evolutionary assumptions
are the same, they must be held accountable to what new horrors would follow from
application of their misguided counsel.
The law needs evolution like a shopping mall needs a terrorist.
Before the bloodbaths of communism and Nazism stained the 20th century as
the worst mass-murder period in history,
Christian scholar J. Gresham Machen warned of the deadly fallout of bad ideas, and advised
thinking men of their priorities: What is today a matter of academic speculation
begins tomorrow to move armies and pull down empires, he said. In that second stage, it
has gone too far to be combatted; the time to stop it was when it was still a matter
of impassionate debate (Christianity
and Culture, 1912, italics added).

To make an effective impassioned debate
against evolutionary lawyers, one must be informed and skilled in strategic
argumentation. Sadly, many well-meaning creationists enter the fray naked and
unarmed in both knowledge and tactics.
Evolutionists dismiss religious based arguments out of hand; such approaches
put them into patronizing mode. They need to be knocked off their
paper ivory towers.
Challenge them, instead, with the scientific fallacies evolutionary theory
and the logical fallacies of evolutionary philosophy: i.e., dont let them
make truth claims or give advice inconsistent with their own assumptions, or let them
get away with borrowing
Judeo-Christian values and terms. Challenge also their attempts to
exempt themselves from the consequences of their own worldview. They are not
allowed to act as intellectuals detached from the rest of the pawns of evolutionary forces.
Such tactics trip them up in their own nets, turn their bluffing arguments into hot air,
and make them fall on their own sword. Learn the art and science of intellectual
engagement: master the
Baloney Detector and keep up to date on the news right here.

If you want to take part in the most impassioned debate of our time  if
you want a cause worth fighting for  now, before the armies march, before the
empires are pulled down, is the time for all good men to come
to the aid of their worldview. Let Creation-Evolution Headlines be
part of your daily basic training, and help recruit others.
Next headline on:Politics and Ethics  Darwinism
and Evolutionary Theory

In a recent issue of PNAS, El-Samad et al. showed that the
mechanism used in Escherichia coli to combat heat shock is just what a well
trained control engineer would design, given the signals and the functions
available.Living cells defend themselves from a vast array of environmental insults. One
such environmental stress is exposure to temperatures significantly above the
range in which an organism normally lives. Heat unfolds proteins by introducing
thermal energy that is sufficient to overcome the noncovalent molecular
interactions that maintain their tertiary structures. Evidently, this threat has
been ubiquitous throughout the evolution of most life forms. Organisms respond
with a highly conserved response that involves the induced expression of
heat shock proteins. These proteins include molecular chaperones that ordinarily
help to fold newly synthesized proteins and in this context help to refold
denatured proteins. They also include proteases [enzymes that disassemble
damaged proteins] and, in eukaryotes, a proteolytic multiprotein complex called
the proteasome, which serve to degrade denatured proteins that are otherwise
harmful or even lethal to the cell. Sufficient production of chaperones and proteases
can rescue the cell from death by repairing or ridding the cell of damaged
proteins.

This is no simple trick. The challenge to the cell is that the
task is gargantuan, they exclaim. Thousands of protein parts  up
to a quarter of the cells protein inventory  must be generated rapidly in times of
heat stress. But like an army with nothing to do, a large heat-shock response
force is too expensive to maintain all the time. Instead, the rescuers are drafted into action when
needed by an elaborate system of sensors, feedback and feed-forward loops, and protein networks.
The interesting thing about this Commentary, however, is not just the
bacterial system, amazing as it is. Its the way the scientists approached the
system to understand it. Viewing the heat shock response as a control engineer would,
they continue, El-Samad et al. treated it like a robust system and reverse-engineered
it into a mathematical model, then ran simulations to see if it reacted like the
biological system. They found that two feedback loops were finely tuned to
each other to provide robustness against single-parameter fluctuations.
By altering the parameters in their model, they could
detect influences on the response time and the number of proteins generated.
This approach gave them a handle on what was going on in the cell.

The analysis in El-Samad et al. is important not just because it captures
the behavior of the system, but because it decomposes the mechanism into intuitively
comprehensible parts. If the heat shock mechanism can be described and
understood in terms of engineering control principles, it will surely be informative
to apply these principles to a broad array of cellular regulatory mechanisms
and thereby reveal the control architecture under which they operate.

With the flood of data hitting molecular biologists in the post-genomic era, they explain,
this reverse-engineering approach is much more promising than identifying the function of
each protein part, because:

...the physiologically relevant functions of the majority of proteins encoded in most
genomes are either poorly understood or not understood at all. One can imagine
that, by combining these data with measurements of response profiles, it
may be possible to deduce the presence of modular control features, such as
feedforward or feedback paths, and the kind of control function that the system
uses. It may even be possible to examine the response characteristics of a given
system, for example, a rapid and sustained output, as seen here, or an oscillation,
and to draw inferences about the conditions under which a mechanism is
built to function. This, in turn, could help in deducing what other signals are
participating in the system behavior.

The commentators clearly see this example as a positive step forward toward the ultimate
goal, to predict, from the response characteristics, the overall
function of the biological network. They hope other biologists
will follow the lead of El-Samad et al. Such reverse engineering may be the most effective means
of modeling unknown cellular systems, they end: Certainly, these kinds of analyses promise
to raise the bar for understanding biological processes.
1Tomlin and Axelrod, Understanding biology by reverse engineering the control,
Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences USA, 10.1073/pnas.0500276102, published online before print March 14, 2005.2El-Samad, Kurata, Doyle, Gross and Khammash, Surviving heat shock: Control strategies for robustness and performance,
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 10.1073/pnas.0403510102, published online before print January 24, 2005.

Reader, please understand the significance of this
commentary. Not only did El-Samad et al. demonstrate that the design
approach works, but these commentators praised it as the best way to understand
biology (notice their title). That implies all of biology, not just
the heat shock response in bacteria, would be better served with the design approach.
This is a powerful affirmation of
intelligent design theory from scientists outside the I.D. camp.
Sure, they referred to
evolution a couple of times, but the statements were incidental and worthless.
Reverse engineering needs Darwinism like teenagers need a pack
of cigarettes. Evolutionary theory contributes nothing to this approach;
it is just a habit, full of poison and hot air. Design theory breaks out of
the habit and provides a fresh new beginning.
These commentators started their piece with a long paragraph about how engineers
design models of aircraft autopilot systems; then they drew clear, unambiguous parallels to biological
systems. If we need to become design engineers to understand biology, then
attributing the origin of the systems to chance, undirected processes is foolish.
Darwinistas, your revolution has failed. Get out of the way, or get with the program.
We dont need your tall tales and unworkable utopian dreams any more.
The future of biology belongs to the engineers who appreciate good design when they
see it.
Its amazing to ponder that a cell is programmed to deal with
heat shock better than a well-trained civil defense system can deal with a regional heat
wave. How does a cell, without eyes and brains, manage to recruit thousands
of highly-specialized workers to help their brethren in need? (Did you notice
some of the rescuers are called chaperones? Evidently, the same nurses who
bring newborn proteins into the world also know how to treat heat stroke.)
And to think this is just one of many such systems
working simultaneously in the cell to respond to a host of contingencies is truly
staggering.
Notice also how the commentators described the heat shock response system as
just what a well trained control engineer would design.
Wonder Who that could be? Tinkerbell? Not with her method of designing (see
03/11/2005 commentary). No matter; leaders in the I.D. movement
emphasize that it is not necessary to identify the Designer to detect design.
But they also teach that good science requires following the evidence wherever it leads.Next headline on:Intelligent Design  Cell Biology

Ethics Watch 03/12/2005: Scientists may have found an ethical
source of stem cells: unfertilized human eggs, reports
News@Nature.
If so-called parthenogenetic eggs can differentiate into stem cells without sperm,
it may allow proponents of embryonic stem cell research to avoid the charge of
killing human embryos.
Even with this prospect, however, cell biologist Nancy L. Jones of Wake
Forest University Baptist Medical Center warns that the time to discuss the ethics
is before, not after, experimentation begins. Her comments and those of bioethicist
William P. Cheshire of the Mayo Clinic can be read on
EurekAlert.
That hasnt stopped stem cell research from going full steam ahead.
A news release from Ohio State
reports that researchers have found a way to mass-produce embryonic stem cells to
meet the expected demand. It makes no mention of ethical concerns.Next headline on:Politics and Ethics

This admission does nothing to help the Darwinists.
Even trusting the shaky dating methods for the sake of argument, it adds to the
problem that life appeared suddenly in a profusion of forms. Moorbath has
just robbed his fellow Darwinists of half their allotted practice time for bacteria to hone
their engineering skills. Those bacteria must have had to race extra fast
to invent all the molecular machines needed for the higher
organisms that followed. To add to the Darwinists woes,
the microbiologists are finding evidence of sophistication in the most primitive
forms of life (see next entry).
A cartoon of a mans head in a vice comes to mind.
Did you catch the line that a claim was made without sufficient evidence,
yet was featured on the covers of learned and popular journals?
Could that be happening today? Has anyone learned the lesson?
Next headline on:Fossils 
Geology

Sadly, Gitai assumes evolution in various places, but
not with evidence: only with inference, in spite of the evidence. For example,
If systems are similar due to convergent evolution, they can
point us toward natures optimal solution to a problem, whereas, if
they differ due to divergent evolution, they can identify the basic rules
that have remained intact. Those are pretty big ifs. What if they are both
due to intelligent design? He would never think of asking the right questions,
even though he has no answers. The evolutionary relationships between
actin, MreB, and ParM remain unclear, as they are similarly divergent from each other,
he drones in one place, and The interrelatedness of these spiraled structures
remains unclear, in another.
The rest of his references of evolution
only assume it. He has convergent evolution (read: simultaneous miracles)
happening all over the place. He personifies nature in the previous quote:
natures optimal solution to a problem. Now that we know
who the Darwin Partys goddess is  Tinkerbell (see 03/08/2005
commentary)  we wish him luck getting optimal solutions from her. Tinkerbells
technique is to zap organisms with mutations using her magic wand. But
she flitters about from place to place with no goal in mind, only hoping that
the bullets she fires into the machinery will make things run better.
You know the game is rigged when two separate organisms arrive at the same
optimal solution. Calling it convergent evolution will not fool the
perceptive viewers of this magic kingdom; they know somebody is behind the
scenes controlling the show.
For this reason, we have to give this story both the Amazing and
Dumb awards. Amazing for the bacteria, Dumb for the human.
Next headline on:Cell Biology 
Intelligent Design 
Evolution 
Amazing Stories (scientific content) 
Dumb Stories (evolutionary interpretation)

Martians Might Be Troglodytes 03/11/2005
According to an article on
Space.Com,
Spirit and Opportunity arent going to find critters on the surface.
Since the surface is harsh because of radiation, a safer environment might be found in caves.
The discovery of soluble rock and methane is leading some to imagine that extensive
caves might exist on Mars, and maybe that is where the methane is coming from.
Could methane emissions be a signature of life?
The fact that you find methane does not mean you have to have life,
said Tobias Owen (U of Hawaii), one of the discoverers of methane on Mars (and also
a member of the Huygens team). You have to be very careful.
John Rummel agrees. Hes a NASA planetary protection advisor tasked with
avoiding undue contamination of Mars (and, conversely, of Earth from Martian organisms).
Apparently smarting from the fallout of the over-hyped Martian Meteorite saga of 1996,
he said, Its an art of managing uncertainty. The public deserves
an honest agency.

We deserve it, but were not getting it.
All the rhetoric about water indicating life and methane indicating life is giving NASA
a bad name, at least among logically-minded people. Water is to life what
iron is to a city. Cities need iron, but the element does not imply the other.
Life is characterized by functional information  specified complexity 
not the basic elements of which it is composed. Neither does finding earth-life
in extreme environments imply it originated there by evolution, and astrobiologists
know this. The public deserves an honest agency.
Next headline on:Mars 
Origin of Life

Traditionally, anthropologists thought that modern hunter-gatherer tribes like
the Mlabri descended through the ages unchanged. But an analysis of the
tribe led by Mark Stoneking of the Max Plank Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
in Leipzig, Germany, indicates that these communities are more complex than previously imagined. (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

Genetic comparisons with other agricultural tribes, as well as studies of tribal
myths, indicate that these people reverted to hunting and gathering after years of
experience in agriculture.

Stoneking cant stay away from the E word, even though the evidence is
against it: hunter-gatherers have changed and evolved, particularly
in response to interactions with agricultural groups, he
equivocates.
All evolution would have to involve change, by definition; but not all change is evolution, in
the Darwinian sense. Charlie did not intend to teach that humans were evolving
downward into more primitive forms. If that were the trend, we would all be bacteria in a few hundred
million years.
Creationists predict that humans will always be found to be innately
intelligent and capable, yet often degenerate because of sin. People
started smart and fell backward because
of sin, but have always been fully human, made in the image of God. Evolutionists
believe humans are at the end
of a long progression toward increasing complexity and intelligence, so they would
expect some to be further behind in social evolution. Whose
prediction fit these observations?
The politically-correct view of tribal peoples is that they should
be left alone; they are noble savages, in touch with their environment.
But if evolution is falsified, the picture changes. Biblical creationists
especially see them as descendants of advanced civilizations who once knew how to build
ships and cities, mine metals and make musical instruments. If so, it is not
merciful to leave them in their lost and degenerate state. Scientists, of all
people, should mourn the foolish mythologies and needless diseases that enslave many of these people.
They should want to help them learn to think scientifically, to test claims by experiment.
This does not imply that
civilization is better in every way, or that some civilized nations have inherent
superiority over those who choose to live in a simpler manner. But Christian
missionaries know that natives are often eager to get modern medicines, for example, and
learn more productive ways to find water and food. And for tribes lost in
pagan darkness, fear and superstition, the message of a loving and forgiving
Creator God is often the most hopeful, joyful, liberating thing they have ever heard.
Watch the Ee-taow! films
and see.
Next headline on:Early Man

Titan: Case of the Missing Methane (and Ethane) 03/11/2005
In Astrobiology Magazine
this week, an article explained why the lack of methane and ethane oceans on Titan
is so mysterious. Jonathan Lunine, a chemist and astrobiologist who has been
studying Titan for over two decades, explained why these hydrocarbons ought to be there.
Methane (CH4) is split by ultraviolet light from the sun. The hydrogen
drifts off to space, leaving more carbons and fewer hydrogen atoms. These
join into more complex hydrocarbons, especially ethane (C2H6)
which precipitate out of the clouds and fall to the ground. Ethane and
methane should both be liquid at the 95K temperatures on the surface.

Since this chemistry is irreversible, we can say that products are
being made and deposited on the surface. If the chemistry on
Titan has gone on in steady-state over the age of the solar system, then we
would predict that a layer of ethane 300 to 600 meters thick should be
deposited on the surface. That would make it the biggest hydrocarbon reservoir
on any of the solid bodies in the solar system.
(Emphasis added in all quotes.)

Yet even before Huygens landed (see 01/21/2005
story), it was clear the ethane was not there, and none of the expected oceans of
methane were detectable. The only alternative explanations Lunine can think of are (1) there are unknown
reservoirs of methane under the surface, or (2) the chemistry
is an occasional process, and we happen to be seeing Titan today at a time
when chemistry is ongoing, where there is enough methane in the atmosphere.
(Generally, planetary scientists try to avoid the notion that humans are living in a
special time when unusual things are happening.)
(3) A third idea is that some less-dense hydrocarbon, like polyacetylene, is
floating on the oceans and covering them up.

Sorry, astrobiologists, you lost the prediction
(see 01/15/2005 commentary). You cannot
keep multiplying ad hoc assumptions to keep your falsified tale alive.
Notice that Lunine did not even consider the possibility that Titan
is young. The belief that these objects are billions of years old is
sacrosanct, because the Darwin Party thought police will not tolerate
thefts of the time they need to evolve molecules into men.
Next headline on:Dating Methods 
Solar System

Poll 03/10/2005: On Baptist
Press News, Mark Hartwig explains the results of a poll of public school students. It shows
that, despite decades of indoctrination into evolution, only 18% believe that God was not involved
in the origin of man. Evolution supporters are frustrated by such findings,
he says; Theyre pulling their hair out over these polls.Next headline on:Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory

These proteins tell one part of a cell to grow outward while telling its neighbor to
recede or indent itself in a finely tuned biological dance. The results
are structures that, despite their delicate appearance and slenderness,
provide the strength necessary to allow the plant to grow and thrive.
The findings point out that these distinct signals play a critical
role in the development of leaf cell walls and leaf structures in a controlled
and ordered way and that genetically over expressing one or the other leads
to cells lacking the interlocking jigsaw puzzle appearance.
(Emphasis added in all quotes.)

They found that plants grown without the genes for these proteins could not produce
the interlocking pattern. Although they have made progress understanding how
this works, theres much more going on: While the researchers unlocked a
fascinating mechanism of biochemical crosstalk that coordinates
cells into tissues, a deeper understanding of how plant cells chemically
talk to each other to grow or recede in an ordered way remains unclear.
For one thing, how does a protruding lobe find the corresponding socket?
What master control coordinates all the individual activities? More research
is needed.
1Jeffrey Settleman, Intercalating Arabidopsis Leaf Cells:
A Jigsaw Puzzle of Lobes, Necks, ROPs, and RICs,
Cell,
Volume 120, Issue 5, 11 March 2005, Pages 570-572, doi:10.1016/j.cell.2005.02.025.

Things dont just happen. The intricate
patterns in nature are controlled by elaborate mechanisms and programs.
Think of how weak a cell of cytoplasm is; how does it gain the strength to stand
up against gravity, hold out its leaves, and grow? Here is another example where
multiple players work in a coordinated way for a purposeful result. Why,
then, do Darwin Party propagandists make outlandish claims that there is not a
shred of evidence for creation? If they cannot explicate in detail the numerous,
successive, slight modifications that could achieve this kind of engineering
by chance, theyve got monstrous puzzles of their own.
Next headline on:Plants, Botany 
Amazing Stories

The article quotes William Cheshire, a neurology professor at the Mayo Clinic and
a Christian activist, preaching, We must be careful not to violate the integrity
of humanity or of animal life. Research projects that create
human-animal chimeras risk disturbing fragile ecosystems, endanger health and
affront species integrity But such sermons are likely to fall
on deaf ears in the modern biotech lab, which long ago jettisoned the Judeo-Christian
foundation for ethics, and now views protestors as a mere nuisance
(see 02/11/2005 entry).
Since there is no ban on this kind of research,
and since the Darwinists view all life as clumps of cells, which are in turn
clumps of chemicals, there is no stopping their tinkering with human life in the
same manner as they would mix reagents in a test tube.
The thought of a human-mouse mixture will undoubtedly be fodder for jokes and
cartoons in some quarters, but it is deadly serious. We are well on the way
into a Darwinian brave new world, treating human flesh as a commodity, with eager labs
racing to outdo each other, well funded from government and taxpayer largesse
(see 02/18/2005 entry).
Proponents tantalize onlookers with promises of miracle cures, but what horrors this
uncontrolled, values-free enterprise will produce can only be imagined.
Next headline on:Politics and Ethics

The evolutionists impossibility can be the
creationists certainty, and vice versa. Things creationists consider
impossible (such as the origin of life by chance  see online
book) are routinely assumed by evolutionists. The surprise effect can help
distinguish the validity of the two worldviews. Why are evolutionists so often
surprised by what they find? Judeo-Christian creationists see this
as congruent with the statement In the beginning, God created the heavens
and the Earth.Next headline on:Cosmology.

This is the kind of amazing scientific fact that can
inspire a youngster to take an interest in science.
Cavitation can produce such violence in water that it can rip
apart steel propellers and erode through solid concrete in dam channels, such as happened at Glen
Canyon Dam in 1983 (see videos at Open
Video Project). Cavitation may have been one of several effects in a
worldwide flood that could have made mincemeat of solid rock with no trouble at all
(see CRS article).
Next headline on:Physics  Amazing Stories

As well as providing another possible mechanism for initiating immunity by dendritic cells,
the gap-junction-mediated cross-presentation described by Neijssen et al. offers an
interesting method of efficiently limiting the spread of replicating virus.
The authors show that not only will a cell expressing viral proteins be killed by T cells,
but so will its closest neighbours  because they present viral peptides obtained
through gap junctions. Extending the destruction to adjacent cells may provide
a fire-break around an infection, ensuring that if low levels of virus
have spread to surrounding cells, but have yet to produce sufficient protein to allow
recognition, such cells will still be eliminated.
(Emphasis added in all quotes.)

The width of the firebreak is controlled, they explain: The rapid degradation of peptides
within the cells cytosol means that the spread of peptides through gap junctions
will be rather limited, probably allowing the targeting of adjacent cells but
not those more than one cell distant from the infection. Thus, the integrity
of targeting should be maintained, with only limited bystander destruction.
1Heath and Carbone, Coupling and
cross-presentation,
Nature
434, 27 - 28 (03 March 2005); doi:10.1038/434027a2Neijssen et al., Cross-presentation by intercellular peptide transfer through gap junctions,
Nature
434, 83 - 88 (03 March 2005); doi:10.1038/nature03290.

Did Haeckels Defunct Recapitulation Theory Influence the Supreme Court? 03/08/2005
One of our readers uncovered an amicus brief
from the American Psychological Association (q.v. on
American Bar Association
website) encouraging the Supreme Court to overturn capital punishment for minors (see
03/04/2005 entry). One of the key arguments in the brief is
that Neuropsychological research demonstrates
that the adolescent brain has not reached adult maturity. Zeroing in on
scientific evidence, the brief claimed Of particular interest with regard to decision-making
and criminal culpability is the development of the frontal
lobes of the brain. (Emphasis added in all quotes.)
For support, the brief
cited a 2004 paper by Gogtay et al. from PNAS,1 describing results of
MRI scans of 13 young individuals undergoing various activities; the team concluded that juvenile
frontal lobes were not as well developed as those of adults. Yet this teams
conclusions leaned heavily on evolutionary assumptions, particularly those of Ernst Haeckel,
author of the now-defunct recapitulation theory (often stated in its pretentious
prose, ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, meaning, the development of the
embryo imitates its evolutionary history). The paper contains subtle
references to recapitulation theory in making the claim that teenagers are too immature
for responsible behavior:

The superior temporal cortex, which contains association areas that integrate
information from several sensory modalities, matured last. Furthermore, the
maturation of the cortex also appeared to follow the evolutionary sequence in which
these regions were created.

In mammals, the inferior temporal cortex, along with parts of the STG, posterior
parietal cortex, and prefrontal cortex, are high-order association areas, which are
also most recent evolutionarily. Our observation of these areas appearing
to mature later may suggest that the cortical development follows the evolutionary
sequence to some degree.

Similarly, gender differences in brain maturation could not be explored, because
there are only six males and seven females in the sample. However, our findings
uncover key information on the maturational sequence of early brain development and
its relation to functional and evolutionary milestones.

Phylogenetically, some of the oldest cortical regions lie on the inferior brain
surface in the medial aspect of the temporal lobe... The maturation
process in the vicinity of these areas appeared to have started early
(ontogenetically) already by the age of 4 years...

(Bullets added.)

In The
Mismeasure of Man (W. W. Norton, 1981), Stephen Jay Gould catalogued the history of
the recapitulation theory, which By 1920... had collapsed. He says that it
ranks among the most influential ideas of late
nineteenth-century science and gives examples of its abuse to justify racism and sexism.
Gould claims that the scientific evidence actually supports the opposite conclusion:
the young and the embryo are more advanced than the adult,
a concept termed neoteny. If so, this turns the racist and sexist interpretations
of the recapitulation theory upside down:

Under recapitulation, adults of inferior races are like children of superior races.
But neoteny reverses the argument. In the context of neoteny, it is goodthat
is, advanced or superiorto retain the traits of childhood, to develop more slowly.
Thus, superior groups retain their childlike characters as adults, while inferior groups pass
through the higher phase of childhood and then degenerate toward apishness. Now consider
the conventional prejudice of white scientists: whites are superior, blacks inferior.
Under recapitulation, black adults should be like white children. But under neoteny,
white adults should be like black children.

This demonstrates how a misguided scientific claim can have profound cultural effects,
sometimes polar opposites from the same data.
1Gogtay et al., Dynamic mapping of human cortical development during
childhood through early adulthood,
Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences PNAS 101: 8174-8179; published online before print as 10.1073/pnas.0402680101.

This is scandalous. If the Supreme Court was
snookered by baloney offered up by the pseudoscientific APA in making its decision,
then every family member of every victim murdered by juveniles, every suffering
witness to Columbine High Schools mass murder spree, should point an angry,
accusing finger at Ernst Haeckel, and Pope Charlie who encouraged him, and all the
current charlatans who still invoke Haeckels phony
biogenetic law
of recapitulation, and accuse them all of co-conspiracy to divert attention from the
Constitution and onto pseudoscience. (Read the 03/04/2005
entry and commentary also.)
No other society has deemed teenagers as
incapable of morally responsible behavior; on the contrary, good societies have
stressed the importance of moral training early in life, and the need to correct
misbehavior from childhood. MRI scans have nothing to say about
the moral character of minors, much less so whether the development of their frontal
lobes is recapping some presumed animal ancestry. Read Goulds steaming
indictment of recapitulation theory and its promoter, the fraud Ernst Haeckel, who
practically worshipped the ground Father Charlie walked on.
Folks, you have just seen
Darwinian mythology sway the highest court in the land on a matter of life and
death. What are you going to do about it?
Next headline on:Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory  Politics and Ethics

Another article on EurekAlert
announced that some neurons appear able to transmit three separate signals at the same time.
Hyman has a lot to say about information and signal processing, but not much about evolution.
For instance, he says:

The subtlety and complexity of the brains outputs, along with its ability
to change in response to new information, is supported by a rich set of mechanisms
for cell-cell communication involving at an anatomical level, intricate but
plastic [i.e., adaptable] local connections, larger scale neural circuits and
overlying global regulatory systems; and at the chemical level, a large number
of neurotransmitters with highly diverse mechanisms for decoding their informational content.

In another paragraph he says, Neurons are specialized to receive, process, and
transmit information, and describes how this is done chemically as well as
electrically. When it comes to explaining where this information came from, and
how all this information processing complexity arose, he mentions the word evolution only once.
Because it is observed that some neurotransmitters serve multiple functions and are
hard to classify, he concludes,
Unfortunately for those scientists with an intense need for simple classifications,
evolution was a tinkerer that has reused signaling molecules to different effect
in many different contexts.
1Steven E. Hyman, Magazine: Neurotransmitters,
Current
Biology,
Volume 15, Issue 5, 8 March 2005, Pages R154-R158, doi:10.1016/j.cub.2005.02.037.2Dr. Walter T. Brown has
calculated that this number vastly exceeds the number of all the electrical connections
in all the appliances, computers and electronic devices on earth.

This article was so good until we hit the E word,
we were going to really praise it to the hilt. Forget his stupid last sentence for a moment and
think of all that complexity working for you right now.
Think of all those connections  100,000 per cell in some cases, all connected to
neighboring cells not in a haphazard manner, but with purpose. The proof is that
it works: here you are, seeing, reading and thinking, while all this unfathomable amount of
information processing going on inside that little 3-pound jelly-like mass in your skull.
Hyman seems almost beside himself describing the wonder of it, as he rightly should feel.
How on earth can he say this arrived by mindless, purposeless processes of evolution?
There is no way in a million universes that level of information could arise by chance,
even from an ape-like ancestor (see 12/30/2004 entry),
let alone from a primordial soup (see online book).
Evolution was a tinkerer, he claims, thus
personifying
the favorite little Darwin Party goddess and proving that not even an evolutionist
can be a consistent atheist. Now we know who their ding-a-ling goddess is.
She gets the gong for her hopelessly inadequate impersonation of an intelligent
designer. Its Tinker Bell.
Next headline on:Human Body 
Evolution 
Amazing Stories

Both these articles gave ID a respectful forum.
Neither of them quoted a Darwinist able to answer the scientific questions.
The ABC article explained Behes claim about the complexity of the bacterial
flagellum and molecular machines being inexplicable by Darwinian mutation and natural
selection. The wimpy counterargument was, merely, Darwinists, who still comprise
the large majority of scientists, say Professor Behe and others are simply appropriating
what is yet unknown to conclude that it must be created by a higher intelligence.
This is a tacit admission that they have no answer.
Instead, the Darwinists show obstinacy and unwillingness to think.
Maestros statement, We arent going to convince them and they arent
going to convince us, conveys a spirit of cold war, not negotiation. The
statement is not symmetric. Its not that the I.D. scientists are equally
dogmatic; they are the ones willing to debate, and trying to get these issues out on
the table for consideration. Its the Darwin Party that has no scientific
response to the design arguments and refuses to consider them on a priori
philosophical grounds.
Some churchmen in 17th century Europe refused to look through
Galileos
telescope for fear it would jeopardize their views. Now, the roles are reversed.
Some naturalistic scientists are figuratively refusing to look through Behes
microscope at the irreducible complexity of molecular machines. To avoid looking
like modern dogmatists, the Darwinists need to debate and show their explanatory
muscle. They either need to provide detailed mechanisms by which specified complexity
could arise  and did arise  by natural means, or else
concede that they are beholden to a philosophical preference.
Only unequivocal success at the former approach will permit them any claim to privilege in academic circles.
Next headline on:Evolution  Intelligent Design

How good are psychiatrists at determining human
responsibility? They can monitor brain waves, and attach electrodes to parts
of a brain to see what parts light up when a person is stimulated in various ways.
Character, however, cannot be measured by lab instruments.
Darwin Party scientists, who are materialists by definition, perceive
every biological function as an interaction of molecules acted on by natural selection.
There is no spirit, no soul, no truly intangible entity called character; these are
just artifacts of chemistry. Such
reductionism
leads to some serious ramifications, as seen here. These scientists have
made a very subjective judgment that the chemistry in a teenage brain has not
sufficiently progressed to make them accountable for their behavior. But here
they become morally confused, because they invoke the word culpable, thus
making a value judgment: These developmental differences make them less
culpable.... What on earth is culpability, if not responsibility 
a measurement of character, guilt or innocence? How can anyone make a judgment
that this or that chemical reaction is deserving of the ultimate punishment?
Apparently the Supreme Court did
not catch this inconsistency and ask the scientific experts to define their
terms. They allowed them to wander outside their worldview and sneak in
Judeo-Christian moral concepts.
It is one thing to say that the mind can be affected by the brain, and
that behavior can be influenced, sometimes overwhelmingly, by chemistry. It is
another to say the mind is chemistry. The materialistic
Darwin Party biologists and psychologists, who are nearly 100% Democrats
(see 12/02/2004 entry), have achieved a coup over
the Supreme Court by fooling them into thinking the debate revolved around science.
They dressed up their reductionist, materialist philosophy in scientific garb to give
it an undeserved authority.
Naturalism cannot judge character. The Darwinists think
lying evolved (see 04/26/2004 entry),
culture evolved (06/28/2004),
and the mind evolved (06/16/2004); but to believe this,
they must use their own intangible minds as if they were capable of true, objective
logic and reliable perception of the world  thoughts that cannot be reduced to
interactions of atoms and molecules. To convince others, they must resort to
bluffing
and extrapolating
meager lab results based on their preconceived philosophical notions. Their
position is unsound scientifically, logically, philosophically and politically
(see The Evolution of Folly, or Vice Versa? (10/14/2002).
Some of these false prophets even teach that rape evolved (07/17/2003) and that
suicide terrorism is an evolutionary artifact (see 04/02/2004
entry). Rather than express outrage at such views, Science prints them with commendations
from peers! What kind of society will this bring  one in which criminal behavior
is rewarded as survival of the fittest?
Regardless of your position on the death penalty, you should be outraged
at the way this Supreme Court decision was argued and what it implies. If you are an adult, you were once
16 or 17 years old; how would you feel if someone told you that you were utterly
incapable of responsible or logical behavior till you were 25? If you are in
age group 16-25, how do you feel about these Darwinist eggheads deciding you have
no sense, and cannot be held responsible for your actions? You can be an honor
student at high school, you can attend the university and get a PhD, you can vote
and drive and marry and write and perform community service and serve on a battlefield and
do a million other things that require skill, intelligence,
planning, logic, choice and determination. But if you murder someone, well, you
couldnt help yourself, because your frontal lobe was not yet fully developed.
Because of this ruling, young criminals may become emboldened to commit murder,
knowing that, if caught, they might win an all-expense paid living with free cafeteria
and gym. Anyone thinking the battle over evolution only affects the biology
classroom had better wake up. It affects all of society, including the actions
of those gang members walking down your street. This is another reason why
the Darwin Party, the pseudoscientific propaganda arm of the Democratic Party and of
radical liberals worldwide, must be defeated.
Next headline on:Politics and Ethics  Darwinism and
Evolutionary Theory

What Is Melting the Ice on Enceladus? 03/04/2005
When Cassini flew by Enceladus from 730 miles up on Feb. 15, scientists were hoping it
would reveal the secret of its active surface. As is common in planetary
science, the mystery only deepened (click
here for photo gallery). The surface showed a complex mix of canyons,
ridges and spots that suggest a taffy pulling machine has been at work: whatever
flowed, it appears to have been thick and viscous.
Richard A. Kerr in Science1 agreed that the little
Saturnian ice ball has become stranger still. He mentions the first
of two puzzles that have deepened with the latest high-resolution photos. One
is that Enceladus is not in any tidal resonance with other moons that could generate
the interior heat necessary for cryovolcanism. Unless scientists can infer
enough radioactive decay in a possible rocky core, how could this little moon, that
should long ago have frozen solid throughout, generate such exotic topography?
(By contrast, nearby Tethys, with six times the mass, is mostly covered with craters.)
The other mystery is the nature of the viscous material.
Scientists had hoped to detect ammonia that might have mixed with the water ice to lower its
melting point and give it more viscosity. But now, it is reported in the
JPL employee newsletter
Universe (02/25/2005), the infrared mapper detected almost
pure water ice: Ammonia or ammonium compounds and carbon dioxide were expected,
but not seen in the data. Dr. Robert N. Clark said the spectra looked
as pure as laboratory-fabricated water ice.
So Enceladus joins Europa, Io, Ganymede, Miranda, Triton and other
moons with evidence of recent surface activity. Scientists eagerly await another
look, even closer (from 310 miles), next Wednesday, March 9.
1Richard A. Kerr, A Strange Little Saturnian Ice Ball Gets Stranger Still,
Science,
Vol 307, Issue 5714, 1387 , 4 March 2005, [DOI: 10.1126/science.307.5714.1387].

Most planetary scientists are very honest with their
data and glad to find new puzzles to solve. But born and bred on billions of
years, they just cannot seem to shake out of the world-picture they have grown to
feel comfortable with, that of slow, gradual processes over vast ages, even when the
data points are poking them in the back. Some of them would not
dare to think of shrinking the timeline of the solar system for fear of incurring the
wrath of the Darwin Party (that needs the time; see the story of
Lord Kelvin).
But what if these bodies are really
young after all? Cant we at least expand our minds and consider the
possibility? It sure would fit the observations better. Planetary scientists
glibly toss around the Ma (mega-annum, million years)
like this example in the Kerrs article: All
in all, large parts of Enceladus have suffered fairly energetic events fairly recently,
perhaps less than 100 million years ago  as if they knew that, or as if
100 million years is recent. 100 million years is a long, long, long
time; all the major mountain ranges on Earth are said to be far younger in their
scheme, for comparison. Yet 100 million years is only 1/50 of the timeline
taught without hint of controversy in all the textbooks.
If these phenomena look young, so be it; dont
force-fit the observations into a predetermined timeline where the data points are all
clustered near the recent end. A million here, a few million there, and pretty
soon youre talking real funny.Next headline on:Solar System  Dating Methods

Indonesian Hobbit No Numbskull 03/04/2005
Whoever Homo florensiensis was (see 10/27/2004
entry), it was no dumb half-ape. This miniature human packed a lot of brains into
a small skull, says Michael Balter in Science1 (see also
EurekAlert,
National
Geographic
and BBC News). A cast
of the brain made from the skull shows complexity: convolutions in the frontal lobe suggest an
intelligent mind, a revelation corroborated by the presence of stone tools and
evidence of fire nearby. Balter quotes an evolutionary anatomist on the implications:
the new study upsets one of our main concepts of human evolution, that brain size
has to increase for humans to become clever. Another calls the finding
a real stunner.
All the same, News&Nature
is claiming this silences the critics, like Teuku Jacob (who took possession of the fossils
till recently returning them) who claimed the creature was only a modern human suffering
from the disease of microcephaly (small brain). Yet with so few microcephalic skulls
available for study, others are not sure Jacobs claim has been discredited. Because
the fossil doesnt resemble that of a pygmy or a microcephalic individual, many are ready to call
it a new species of hominid. But then, because its skull showed evidence of
advanced development of the front lobes of the brain, where reasoning occurs,
(News@Nature), it is hard to consider it primitive. Paleoanthropologists are divided
between explaining H. florensiensis as a degenerate form of modern human, or a
case of a small-brained, small-bodied, pre-erectus hominid managed to get to
Flores in the distant past, and then, in a case of parallel evolution with modern humans,
evolved a relatively advanced brain on its own.
Balter quotes Fred Spoor (University College, London) giving the bottom line:
The real take-home message here is that advanced behaviors, like making sophisticated
stone tools, do not necessarily require a large, modern, humanlike brain. It can be
done by reorganizing a small brain, with convolutions and rewiring, and this goes to the
heart of our understanding of human evolution.
1Michael Balter, Small but Smart? Flores Hominid Shows Signs of Advanced Brain,
Science,
Vol 307, Issue 5714, 1386-1389, 4 March 2005, [DOI: 10.1126/science.307.5714.1386a].

Any evolutionists thinking they have an Aha!
case of a missing-link fossil to discredit creationists have a slippery object to try to hang onto.
If brain size does not correlate with intelligence, then a century and a half of
human-evolution storytelling goes down the drain. Fine measurements of skull
capacity were a staple of human phylogenetic studies; some, like Paul Broca (now
considered a racist), made
a career out of it. It should have been obvious that even modern human small
people like Tom Thumb could be smarter than local fatheads. And didnt
we learn that birds, with much smaller brains, outwit chimpanzees? (see
02/01/2005 entry).
If hobbitkind were degenerate modern humankind, there is no evolution story
to tell. But if they evolved smart brains independently, in parallel with other upwardly-mobile
hominids, then human evolution has been falsified twice
(see 12/30/2004 entry). Take your pick,
Darwin Party. If indeed this goes to the heart of our understanding of human
evolution, it whacks it with a sharp stone tool.
Next headline on:Early Man  Evolution

Biblical Archaeology Address 03/03/2005Baptist Press posted a report
about an address by noted archaeologist William Dever (see 02/18/2005
entry) at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary last month. Dever provided several examples from
his own digs of archaeological finds that corroborate the Biblical
record and chronology. He hit hard against the revisionists who try to deny
the historicity of the Bible.

This article was found via World Net Daily.
Take a moment to read the position of a leading Middle East archaeologist with years of
hands-on research in the field. Doesnt the stance of the revisionists sound familiar?
They will demolish any facts that dont suit their theories, Dever said.
Sounds like the Darwin Partys approach to truth and handling of evidence.
Next headline on:The Bible and Theology  Dating Methods

...A flood of email ensued. Many were supportive; some asked questions. Several
negative and hostile emails were openly critical of my assertion that American
schools should teach evolution in science classrooms to leave no child behind.
In addition to rejecting evolution for religious reasons, several people claimed that
there was not sufficient evidence, that scientists could not all agree, or
that evolution is only a theory which they equate with an unfounded idea.
(Emphasis added in all quotes.)

So in Part II, Evolution: Its Only a Theory, but One Worth Teaching,
Ms. DeVore talked about evidence, the nature of science, and theories. Portions are
reproduced in the commentary with responses in brackets.Click here to continueNext headline on:Evolution  Education
 SETI  Dumb Stories

If you teach science or Sunday School, this could be
a great visual aid to stimulate thinking about intelligent design. It is fun to
watch and quite amazing to think about how the production team had to spend $6 million
and perform 606 takes to get it right. Applying William Dembskis
explanatory filter,
how could you rigorously conclude that the sequence was designed, and not the result
of chance? Contrast this scene with the familiar analogy of a
tornado in a junkyard
producing a 747, popularized by the late
Fred Hoyle. Whats the difference?
Put even a micro-tornado on the Honda set and the whole sequence would fail.
Thats irreducible
complexity  a picture is worth a thousand words. Life is like that.
Next headline on:Intelligent Design  Media 
Amazing Stories

Presumably the hydrothermal activity was there from the beginning of the oceans
themselves. Youve got basically a stable environment, youve got chemical
energy available, and youve got all the building blocks necessary.
So it seems inconceivable to me that it would not have been a viable place
for life to emerge. But [the origin of life] is a great mystery.
Its the greatest detective story out there.
(Emphasis added in all quotes.)

His search for extremophiles (organisms adapted to living in extreme
environments) is used in the movie as a pretext for suggesting life could exist on
other planets, no matter how hot, cold, or different:

Just because weve never seen cryogenic [very cold temperature] life on this
planet doesnt mean it cant exist. Look for life on Titan.
Look for life in the upper atmosphere of Jupiter, in the upper atmosphere of
Venus. We shouldnt rule out any environment.
If life is as tenacious and adaptable as it seems to be here
on Earth, theres no reason why it couldnt exist in some of these other places.

Thus he blurs the line between origin and adaptation.
Despite science having no explanation for the origin of life on earth (see 02/06/2005
entry), Cameron portrays those
who doubt chemical evolution as unscientific reactionaries:
Generally our society is turning its back on science and going to a
more dogmatic view of the world, because people feel that science has not
answered their fundamental questions, he said.
But can science answer fundamental questions, and is science any less dogmatic
when dealing with questions of origins?
The failure of naturalistic science to explain the origin of life
is causing a decline in atheism worldwide, writes Uwe Siemon-Netto, UPI religious affairs editor,
in the Washington
Times. Two developments are plaguing atheism these days, he says.
One is that it appears to be losing its scientific underpinnings. The other is the
historical experience of hundreds of millions of people worldwide that atheists are in
no position to claim the moral high ground.

Translation of Camerons sermon: if you love science but doubt chemical
evolution, you are a dunderhead. What is his definition of science?
Chemical evolution, astrobiology, environmentalism, global warming and stem cell research.
With clever association,
he claims science gave us semiconductors
and astrobiology, so we should embrace both. Sorry, well have ours
a la carte.
Chemical evolution is a reactionary science in more ways than one. That is what is going
backward (see 01/28/2005 entry).
Those who love science should toss astrobiology overboard and see if it can survive
in the extreme environment of scientific scrutiny. Just show us some amazing
marine organisms, Jimmy, with all their designed complexity that defies evolution.
Next headline on:Movies & Media  Marine
Life  Origin of Life 
Dumb Stories.

Mars Life in Embalming Fluid? 03/01/2005
A researcher with the Mars
Express project claims to have found
formaldehyde along with methane in exceptional amounts, reports
News@Nature.
Since methane is destroyed by radiation in hundreds of days, and formaldehyde in
several days, there is either a geological source for it, or it comes from living
organisms in the soil, Vittorio Formisano claims.
Another recent Mars Express
finding, reported by Mars
Daily and others, is evidence for large water reservoirs near the Martian equator.
This is of extraordinary importance, the article says, because up till now
most of the H20 on Mars was locked in polar ice. This is giving hopes
for at least past Martian life a boost; see also the 16
Feb and 23 Feb stories
on the New Scientist website.
Other scientists are not so sure; only 25% of scientists at the first
Mars Express Conference accepted the idea that life exists on Mars now, reports
Space.Com.
Most think Formisanos measurements
are on the borderline of detection and questionable. One skeptic
thinks such claims come from the faith, not fact:

We all want to believe in something, says Yuk Yung, a planetary
geologist from the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. Even as
scientists were not completely objective, especially about something weve
worked on for ten years. Theres enormous pressure to deliver, and under
this pressure you can easily believe things that are unbelievable.
(Emphasis added in all quotes.)

Dr. Yung thinks the spectral match is not convincing, and doesnt believe it.
Formisano claims to have convinced other skeptics to his position, though.
Even if the source of these gases is geological, not biological, the
measurements will be a surprise if confirmed, reports News@Nature:

The discovery of martian methane last year excited scientists, who said that there
were two likely sources of the gas: active geological processes beneath the planets
surface or a population of methane-generating microbes. Because Mars was long
thought to be a dead planet, devoid of both life and geothermal activity, either prospect
came as a revelation.

Some recent Mars
Express images suggest that the planets volcanos were active recently 
and could be active today.
Meanwhile, news agencies have had to retract reports circulated last
month that NASA had found strong evidence for life on Mars; see
Mars Daily.
This claim made its way onto BadAstronomy.com.

Have scientists become midwives of myth? Are they
being pressured to deliver cute little astrobiological packages? Is that what the Mars Express
program is all about? We dont want scientists to give birth to speculation.
We want them to observe the facts, and report them with honesty and integrity.
If Mars is burping gas, fine; thats interesting enough, and doesnt require a baby.
Actually, it would be very interesting. Notice that the article
said that Mars was long thought to be a dead planet. Why?
Because according the Law of the Medes and the Persians, which cannot be altered,
the solar system is 4.5 billion years old. This dogma has led naturalistic
geologists to conclude that
Mars, with a much smaller volume than Earth, should have long ago cooled down, and
therefore could no longer sustain volcanic
activity. If it indeed has volcanos active now, more things
are going to erupt than natural gas and embalming fluid.Next headline on:Mars  Geology 
Dating Methods

Evolution is supported by evidence.a There are several
thousand peer-reviewed scientific journals where the evidence is presented in
article after article.b Natural history museums house large
collections of fossils that document the history of life.cGeologistsd and astronomerse have a massive amount
of observational evidence of the long-term change in physical systems: stars,
galaxies, planets, interstellar dust, asteroids, etc. Biologists
observe and document the patterns of the evolution of life:f for example,
the fossil record,g DNA,h and the observation of evolution in
action such as the adaptive evolution of antibiotic-resistant strains of
bacteriai that now pose a serious threat to human health. Selective
breeding in agriculture generated our crops and domestic animals over thousands of years;
agriculture is evolution in action.j

Evidence: what can be observed, tested, repeated, and reproduced by others.
Evolution (in the Darwinian sense of the common ancestry of all organisms from a one-celled
form, and ultimately from chemicals and particles) is none of the above. According
to Darwinists, it took a unique path on the Earth, so that even if scientists perform some
lab experiment that seems to demonstrate a change, it may not have any relevance to what
happened in prehistory.

Journals: We report on journal articles on evolution right here all the time.
The more they talk about evolution, the more they speak in
glittering
generalities (example) that merely assume evolution rather than
prove it (example). The more they
discuss the technical details of life, they less they talk about evolution. Ask her
to show one article that really presents actual scientific evidence that humans
had bacteria ancestors rather than merely assumes it in spite of the evidence
(example) Once the assumption of
evolution is discarded, the thousands of articles she
generalizes about  the ones that explore the complexity of life
(example) and discuss deep-seated
problems with evolutionary explanations (example) 
could more easily be adduced in favor of creation, not evolution.

Museums: Natural history museums show plenty of biodiversity and extinction, but not
evolution. Colin Patterson, former director of the British museum, one of the greatest
in the world, once wrote that his museum would be glad to show transitional forms if they
had them, but he could not think of a single example that made a watertight argument.
In fact, many old examples, like the horse series, have been modified or discarded as evidence.

Geologists talk about earth history, not life. The age of the earth is a separate
question from biological evolution. Not all change is evolutionary change.
Mountains erode, seas rise and fall, and glaciers advance and retreat; does it logically
follow that bacteria evolve into humans?

Astronomers talk about stars, galaxies and planets; what does that have to do with evolution?
DeVore seems to equate change with evolution, an equivocation
that does nothing to make her point.

Biologists observe and document the present, not the past. Many of the first and greatest
biologists, like Leeuwenhoek, John Ray,
Pasteur and others were creationists and often theologians.

Fossils: apparently DeVore actually believes the fossil record supports evolution.
Has she not heard of the Cambrian explosion, and the trade secret of paleontology,
the existence of systematic gaps between major kinds? Abrupt appearance, stasis and
extinction is the pattern. This is evidence against evolution, not for it.

DNA: for her to use DNA as an evidence for evolution is almost comical. Codes,
languages, translation, error-checking and extreme complexity by chance? Come on.

Antibiotic resistance: in each case, these involve loss of information or else horizontal
change, not an increase in complexity, information or function. Some bacteria and viruses
form quasi-species networks that can share and adapt and reconstruct their networks
in changing environments; this implies all the information was already present.
Microevolution is not the issue. Even young-earth creationists accept horizontal
change. Unless Darwinists can demonstrate new complex information arising through an
undirected, purposeless process, they have no case. Even antibiotic-resistant bacteria tend to fail outside
the hospital, or else they revert to the wild type (see film
Icons of Evolution for lab demonstration).

Agriculture: a silly claim that wins Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week 
agriculture is evolution in action. Selective breeding is intelligent design, not evolution.
We need to keep pushing this point till the Darwin Party gets it. Unlike natural
selection, humans direct the changes according to a predetermined goal. Even a
purebred cow is still a cow, not a whale, and possesses a net loss of genetic
information from the wild type. The more removed from the wild type, the less
our highly-specialized breeds would be able to survive without our specialized care and feeding,
and without the corral fences or homes to keep out the predators. Thats why
its cruel to abandon your pet cat or dog in the woods.

Having fun? Lets do some more. DeVore delves into the nature of science
line of reasoning:

Certainly, there are continuing debates among scientists about the particulars
of cosmic, planetary, and biological evolution. The nature of science
requires continual questioning of ideas, evidence and theories. Theoretical
scientists consider what we know, and pose new ideas and models to explain the natural world.
New models and ideas generate new scientific tests of theory: observational
experiments at Earth and space-based observatories, high-energy collisions of particle
physics, deep-sea dives at the plate boundaries, and lab experiments in molecular
biology to cite a few. Science is based upon observational and experimental
evidence. Concepts that dont match observations are altered or tossed
out. Its an iterative cycle.

That would be a great quote, if she believed it. Questioning is good, so can we
question evolution? Models are good, so if the models fail, can we discard
evolution? Testing is good, so if evolution doesnt match observational
and experimental evidence, can we toss it out? If the iterative cycle continues
to create problems for evolutionary theory, is it time for a paradigm shift?
If you want to see the hypocrisy
of the Darwin Party in action, show them all the evidence that falsifies evolution
(hundreds of examples in the Darwinism chain links, right here) and see if they are
open to consider ousting King Charlie from his throne. What you will get is
a tirade against religion, particularly Christianity. DeVore is a naive positivist;
she thinks science leads to inevitable progress. Sad.
Unbelievably, she uses Kepler,
Newton and Einstein as examples to support naturalistic science.
None of these were biologists, and the first two were staunch Christians and
creationists; even Einstein did not believe God plays dice with the universe.
Both Newton and Kepler (and many other great scientists)
believed scientific inquiry enhanced their worship of the God of Scripture
(example from Joule), and in no way
felt that the observational evidence pointed to an undirected, evolutionary universe;
on the contrary: to them, the heavens declared the glory of God
(example from von Braun).
Next, DeVore discusses the nature of theories in science.
Critics of evolution should probably abandon the tack that evolution is only
a theory, not because it is totally off-base, but because it generates a
knee-jerk reaction by the Darwin Party. Its like pulling the string on
a baby doll, making it say, Well, gravity is only a theory, too,
as if gravity and evolution are in the same category (an example of
association).
Theories are good things in science; the point is, evolution hardly even qualifies
as a hypothesis or hunch, let alone the exalted title of theory
(see 06/12/2003 entry).
It was Charlies little path of inquiry that led to the Great Society
for Storytellers (see 12/22/2003 commentary),
when it was no longer necessary to prove your case in science, but just come up
with a plausible suggestion or hypothesis
(see 01/15/2004 commentary), however untestable.
DeVore does injustice to Kepler
to compare his laws of planetary motion, which work impeccably in getting our spacecraft
to orbit other planets, with Darwins impotent hypothesis, wrongly called the
law of natural selection (see 02/16/2005
entry), a tautology utterly incapable of creating the complex adaptations found
everywhere in biology.
In short, Edna DeVore has published a pathetic defense of evolution.
Calling all Baloney Detectors: warm up
your sharpened wits and teach her a little more about it. Be nice; the
facts dont require vituperative verbosity. But all that is required for
balderdash to triumph is for clear thinkers to write nothing.Next headline on:Evolution  Education
 SETI  Dumb StoriesBack to beginning of article

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A 68-year old scientist, in ill health, hauled off to Rome to stand trial before the Inquisition. Forced, under threat of
torture and imprisonment, to renounce his scientific writings, which are declared to be heretical and against church dogma.
Put under house arrest, he is heard sobbing uncontrollably: The injustice of the sentence tormented him so that he did not sleep for
several nights, but could be heard crying out, babbling and rambling in distraction (Sobel, p. 298). Undeniable
facts of history, forming an open and shut case for religious intolerance of science, right?

Any history of science must deal with the Galileo affair. In many circles it is an icon of science vs religion.
Fortunately, in recent years scholars having been taking fresh looks at the circumstances of Galileos trial and
realizing there are complexities that dramatically change the conventional interpretation. A recent PBS documentary
admitted that the usual slant is quite incorrect. Astronomer and historian
Owen Gingerich, often one to debunk
historical inaccuracies, has researched the incident and challenges the science vs religion spin. And a recent (1999)
new historical biography by Dava Sobel, Galileos Daughter (an award-winning, captivating, original work
we highly recommend) sheds refreshing new light on the life, times, and legacy of this giant of early science, Galileo Galilei.

Our purpose here is not to exonerate the Catholic Church, which is surely culpable for the injustice done to Galileo (for which the
Pope formally apologized in 1992). And as non-Catholics, we condemn all the injustices of the Inquisition, not just
this one. But a quick look at some of the factors involved in the heresy trial will show how
the conventional spin is often greatly misinterpreted:

 Galileo was a personal friend of both major popes that ruled during his lifetime.

 Galileo enjoyed a wide popularity and high reputation by many, if not most, within the Catholic Church. He had many
friends in high places that had no problem at all with his views or with those of Copernicus.

 His book that was condemned in the trial, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief Systems of the World, had received the official
imprimatur of the church, and had been approved by the official Roman censor, Father Niccolo Riccardi. Galileo readily
made all suggested alterations, which did not alter anything of substance.

 Pope Urban VIII had been a lifelong friend of Galileo and had said of him, We embrace with paternal
love this great man whose fame shines in the heavens and goes on Earth far and wide. He praised
Galileo for his uprightness and virtue. Before and
after he had become pope, Galileo enjoyed personal, cordial contact with him; in early years prior to becoming
pope, he [then Cardinal Barberini] wrote to him,
I pray the Lord God to preserve you, because men of great value like you deserve to live a long time
to the benefit of the public.

 Pope Urban VIII did not reject
Copernicanism or Galileos arguing for it, he only urged that Galileo treat it as hypothesis and not
limit Gods inscrutability. Also, correcting another popular misconception, the Pope never invoked
infallibility in the affair, which was not even a Catholic doctrine at the time.

 Copernicanism at the time of Galileo was fairly new, and did not have the observational support it has
today. It lacked the essential extension by Kepler and Newton. Many found Copernicanism interesting
and useful, but others clung to the traditional Ptolemaic view because
it seemed more intuitively obvious, and because it had such a long reputation of utility.

 Pope Urban VIII was in a bad mood at the time of the trial. The papacy had gone to his head, and he had
spent fortunes on self-aggrandizement. In addition, he was accused of being soft on heretics by not acting
stronger against the Reformers. The Thirty Years War was giving him great stress.
Galileos Dialogue came at a very inopportune time. The pope trusted what others said about it, without
reading it himself. He was led to believe, contrary to the facts, that Galileo had double-crossed him by
going against explicit orders. These factors tended to make him inflexible against his former friend.

 The trial represented a brief portion near the end of Galileos long and productive life, during which he
gained wide fame for his discoveries and his books across Europe, and within the Catholic church. Contrary
to popular perceptions, most churchmen, including Pope Urban VIII, were delighted with Galileos discoveries with the telescope.

 In 1616, there was an anti-Copernican edict under Pope Paul V which came just short of calling Copernicanism
heretical and banning the book; Galileo acquiesced by holding to it as opinion or hypothesis and not fact.
Though foolish by todays standards, the Edict did not seriously
hamper his scientific work and writing, until accusations flew again seventeen years later.

 During and after the period of house arrest in Rome, and when he was allowed to return home to Arcetri, Galileo continued
to do scientific experiments and publish with relative freedom.

These are just for starters. Most important, what comes out of the details of the record, is that Galileo was a
staunch Catholic Christian his entire life, never wavering on his devout belief in God, creation, and the Bible.
In fact, Galileo was afraid that the Churchs reputation would be damaged if they rejected Copernicanism; he
took pains to protect the church from foolish and mistaken interpretations.

Neither Copernicus nor Galileo ever intended their works to be considered criticism of the Bible and the church.
Galileo regretted deeply that his work was twisted and misunderstood as such. He went to great lengths to
explain that his science was in no way incompatible with Scripture. Early on he explained in a long letter to the Grand Duchess of Tuscany, I think in the first place that it is very pious to say and prudent to affirm that the Holy Bible can
never speak untruth  whenever its true meaning is understood. Much later, after his trial, he
wrote to a friend, I have two sources of perpetual comfort, first, that in my writings there cannot be found the
faintest shadow of irreverence towards the Holy Church; and second, the testimony of my own conscience, which only
I and God in Heaven thoroughly know. And He knows that in this cause for which I suffer, though many might
have spoken with more learning, none, not even the ancient Fathers, have spoken with more piety or with greater
zeal for the Church than I.

So how are we to explain the ugly accusations of the trial? In a word: vengeance. Galileo had a
knack for making loyal friends and bitter enemies. His razor-sharp logic and penchant for sarcasm won him
admirers and detractors. Some felt he was ramming Copernicanism down the throat of Christendom.
In Dialogues, he created characters to debate Copernicanism, and portrayed
the protagonists as wise scholars and the antagonists as simpletons (he even named one opponent Simplicio).
Some of Galileos enemies understood him to be mocking them, and this inflamed their passion to get even.
Sadly, some of these dishonorable persons wrapped their vice in the cloak of the Church and used their position
to cast the debate as Galileo vs the Bible, or Copernicanism vs the Church: leading to trumped up charges of
the dreaded H word, heresy.

Galileo was framed. He was caught up in a maelstrom of colliding currents: politics, personalities, ambitions,
new discoveries,
wars both physical and theological, suspicions, superstitions and misunderstandings. Unfortunately, Galileo
found himself at the center of the vortex, a victim of circumstances partly his fault and mostly beyond his control: a
church in conflict with Reformers, just past the Council of Trent and trying to assert its authority, suspicious of those
who, like Luther, felt they had the right to interpret the Scriptures for themselves. Galileo knew that his detractors
were, out of insecurity, fabricating a shield for their fallacies out of the mantle of pretended religion and the
authority of the Bible (Sobel, p. 68). In no way was the Church unanimous in condemning Galileo.
Even during the trial, numerous Catholics supported him, and like the archbishop of Siena, despised those
who have control of the sciences, and they have nothing left but to run back to holy ground (Sobel, p. 286).

It could be argued that, rather than science vs. religion, the debate was not about the Bible at all, but about
experimental science vs Greek philosophy. Galileos opponents were primarily academics and
professors, not churchmen. To complicate matters, the Catholic church itself had compromised Biblical
teachings with pagan Greek ideas about nature. Dava Sobel explains that Thomas Aquinas
grafted the fourth-century-B.C. writings of Aristotle onto thirteenth-century Christian doctrine. The
compelling works of Saint Thomas Aquinas had reverberated through the Church and the nascent universities
of Europe for hundreds of years, helping the word of Aristotle gain the authority of holy writ, long before Galileo
began his book about the architecture of the heavens (Sobel, p. 152).

It was Aristotle, not Scripture,
that taught the immutability and perfection of the heavenly spheres in contradistinction to the corruption of
the earth. Finding blemishes on the moon and spots on the sun violated Aristotelian teachings, but not
a word of Scripture. Galileos heresy was against Aristotle, not the Bible!
He wrote, To prohibit the whole science would be but to censure a hundred passages of Holy Scripture
which teach us that the glory and greatness of Almighty God are marvelously discerned in all His works and
divinely read in the open book of Heaven. Galileo believed that Holy Scripture and Nature
are both emanations from the divine word: the former dictated by the Holy Spirit, the latter the observant
executrix of Gods commands (Sobel, p. 64). There was no contradiction between the two, in
his view, but he distrusted the fallibility of human interpretation: Holy Scripture cannot err and the decrees therein
contained are absolutely true and inviolable. I should only have added that, though Scripture cannot err,
its expounders and interpreters are liable to err in many ways.

Along this line, although relatively blameless himself, Galileo seems to have started a philosophy of interpretation
that, taken too far, would later lead to a form of intellectual schizophrenia: the idea that the Bible is concerned only with spirit,
while nature is the exclusive domain of science. In the modern world, this has gone to extremes. Some
Christian creationists subscribe to a dual-revelation theory, that nature is just as
authoritative a revelation from God as Scripture. This is a half-truth, for the Bible certainly teaches that the
works of God declare His glory, but proponents of this view often fail to take into account the fallibility of human interpretation of natural
revelation. They tend to accept whatever secular scientists say as authoritative, and mold the Bible to fit it.

Secularists and atheists, on the other hand, are sometimes patronizingly willing to let religious people have everything
they wish in the spiritual realm, as long as scientists retain their hegemony over the study of nature. Stephen Jay Gould, for
instance, proposes a peace accord called non-overlapping magisteria (with a play on words from
Catholic vocabulary), in which the church gets the art, music and theology, but science gets physics, chemistry and biology.
In both these views, dual-revelation and NOMA, inevitably nature winds up devouring the spirit, and Scripture becomes the servant of
secular science.

We can see the seeds, but not the fruit, of this false dichotomy in Galileo. Quoting Baronio,
he believed the Bible was a book about how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go. He warned against
literal interpretations of Scripture that would have us, for instance, picturing God with hands and feet and eyes, and
human and bodily emotions. He said, I
believe that the intention of Holy Writ was to persuade men of the truths necessary for salvation, such as neither science
nor any other means could render credible, but only the voice of the Holy Spirit. But I do not think it necessary to
believe that the same God who gave us our senses, our speech, our intellect, would have put aside the use of these,
to teach us instead such things as with their help we could find out for ourselves, particularly in the case of these sciences
of which there is not the smallest mention in the Scriptures; and above all, in astronomy, of which so little notice is taken
that the names of none of the planets are mentioned. Surely if the intention of the sacred scribes had been to
teach people astronomy, they would not have passed over the subject so completely. (Sobel, p. 65).

This statement is sensible as far as it goes, but there appears to be a hidden assumption: that the mind of unregenerate man
is capable of discovering truth on its own. This may be practical with regard to repeatable, observable
phenomena like falling bodies and motions of planets, but what about the origin of universe, the origin of the life, and
the origin of the soul? There is no subject under heaven today that modern science does not feel it has authority
to explain by natural causes, even prayer and sexual mores. Reductionist science even goes so far as to
explain love as the sum total of neurotransmitter reactions in the physical brain. Modern science has usurped the spiritual world; it has gone
far beyond Galileos principle, and so we must watch his statements with awareness of where, in hindsight, an
idea can go astray. Nevertheless, Galileo himself attempted to explain Biblical passages like Joshuas
long day as real events, not allegories. He accepted the creation account in Genesis as literally true.

Galileos scientific achievements are so well known as to require little elaboration here. First to turn
a telescope to the heavens; discoverer of sunspots, lunar craters, stars within the Milky Way, the phases of Venus,
and the four large satellites of Jupiter (named the Galilean satellites in his honor); staunch proponent of experiment over authority,
discoverer of laws of falling bodies (in the process disproving Aristotles contention that heavier bodies fall faster),
popularizer and publisher, mathematician, his work is of monumental importance in the history of science.
Einstein overstates the case that he was the father of modern physicsindeed of modern
science altogether, because of his insistence on experiment over logical deductions. He was a giant, but
a giant among giants. His Protestant contemporaries Johannes Kepler and Francis Bacon similarly espoused
the same values of experimental science over authority. And they were building on giants before them, Christian
philosophers who viewed nature as the rational work of a transcendent God, worthy and capable of being explored by
men created in His image.

In keeping with our theme, Galileo considered his faith a driving force behind his science. According to
Sobel, The Dialogue resumed his importuning that truths about Nature be allowed to emerge
through science. Such truths, he still believed, could only glorify the Word and deeds of God.
He was thankful to God for enabling him to see farther than any man before him. In the euphoria of discovery
during those nights turning the telescope toward the heavens for the first time, he expressed, I
render infinite thanks to God for being so kind as to make me alone the first observer of marvels kept hidden
in obscurity for all previous centuries (Sobel, p. 6).

For a delightful and enlightening read, we recommend Dava Sobels excellent book
Galileos
Daughter, (Penguin
Books, 1999). It has the unique amenity of a newly-translated collection of letters from Suor Maria Celeste, his
daughter who spent her life in poverty as a nun.
The biography is woven around these sweet letters from his
devoted and deeply spiritual child. Around these intimate,
innocent epistles,
Sobel masterfully limns the
spirit of the times, the superstitions as well
as the achievements, the nobility and notoriety of numerous persons that came into contact with Galileo during his
long and productive 75 years, which could have continued many more had his body kept up with his tireless mind.
Through many original quotes and sources, Sobel illustrates how the Galileo
affair was far different than the simplistic portrait of science vs religion.
The book has a surprise ending that will move you.

Dava Sobel says that Galileo remained a good Catholic who believed in the power of prayer and endeavored always
to conform his duty as a scientist with the destiny of his soul. Whatever the course of our lives,
Galileo wrote, we should receive them as the highest gift from the hand of God, in which equally reposed
the power to do nothing whatever for us. Indeed, we should accept misfortune not only in thanks, but in
infinite gratitude to Providence, which by such means detaches us from an excessive love for Earthly things
and elevates our minds to the celestial and divine. (Sobel, p. 12).

In 2002, the Galileo spacecraft) completed its 12-year orbital reconnaissance of
Jupiter and its Galilean satellites, the little solar system that overturned Greek dogma and opened a heavens
far more wondrous than even the wise old bearded scientist himself could have imagined.

Did you enjoy this true story? Please write us with your comments, and tell a friend!

Guard what was committed to your trust, avoiding the profane and idle
babblings and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge  by
professing it some have strayed concerning the faith.

I Timothy 6:20-21

Song of the True Scientist

O Lord, how manifold are Your works! In wisdom You have made
them all. The earth is full of Your possessions . . . . May the glory of the Lord endure forever. May the
Lord rejoice in His works . . . . I will sing to the Lord s long as I live; I will sing praise to my God while I have my
being. May my meditation be sweet to Him; I will be glad in the Lord. May sinners be
consumed from the earth, and the wicked be no more. Bless the Lord, O my soul! Praise the Lord!

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